Search Engine Optimization Consultants - Internal Linking

One of the characteristics of good search engine optimization consultants is the attention they pay to details. And, one of the most overlooked details when optimizing websites is internal link building.

Many inexperienced search engine optimization consultants will tell you all you need to know about external links, key words, and the more well-known aspects of search engine optimization (SEO).

But, when you are outsourcing SEO services, you need to be sure that your search engine optimization consultants know every tactic in the book for maximizing your chances of being heard online. After all, good SEO is part of corporate reputation building.

External links, as common knowledge goes, provide legitimacy to the blog or website, particularly in the eyes of Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or whatever your favored search engine is.

If you link to well-known, reputable websites, Google sees this as a sign that your site is relevant and reputable as well. You are known by the company you keep.

But, Too Many External Links Have a Drawback

They send traffic away from your site and straight to the websites you link to.

Not only visitors but even search bots that crawl your site while indexing pages will move away to the other site. And, you don’t want that, not if you are serious about higher page rank.

To counter the downside of external links, most search engine optimization consultants use internal links.

Creating Links Within a Site

There is a definite art to it. Unlike external links, you cannot create a blog roll or a list of favorite websites for promoting pages within the site. What the search engine optimization consultants suggest, however, is creating links in the content of the site.

• When linking a page to the content, make sure you link to text content and not an image. An image cannot be indexed for ranking purposes by search engines.
• Link the relevant page with the key word phrase. If you have a highly ranked key word on your list, you will probably want to link it to the main page of your site. If you have a product-specific key word for your e-commerce site, you may link it to the product landing page and not the home page. Search engine optimization consultants know which pages are best for particular key words.
• Be careful how you link to the site’s main page. Google assigns a higher rank to pages linked to the home page. But, as expert search engine optimization consultants say, a bulky home page littered with links is not a nice sight. So, pick and choose carefully, or ask your search engine optimization consultants to do it.

There are many creative ways to insert internal links to a page. Search engine optimization consultants recommend links to related posts, comments, viewers’ favorites, and even a frequently asked questions section to boost the link network within a site.