Don't Forget Internal Links Count Big Time!

Many savvy search engine optimization (SEO) experts will tell you that incoming links are the most important factor for competitive keyword rankings on the search engines. But did you know that links pointing to pages within your own website also play a crucial role in transferring the ever important Google Page Rank value? Internal link structure is an important aspect of any SEO strategy. This is especially valuable for websites just getting started or recently-purchased domain names. The problem is that the first incoming links to any website normally only point to a home or index page. A proper internal link structure can take those initial incoming links and spread the Google Page Rank or link juice to the many other pages within your site. This can help satisfy the ultimate goal of high rankings with your index page as well is pages of secondary importance.

Superior internal link structure is not only good for SEO but can also ease human navigation within your website. For example, a horde of click here links on your site doesn't tell your visitors anything about the linked page, making it less desirable to click and navigate deeper within your website. Those same links omit critical information for the search engine spiders when they visit for a site crawl — it’s no secret that the less information spiders have, the lower your site will rank.

Many sites still include flash, java or image-based navigation as the primary means for browsing your website. Since search engines still prefer good old-fashioned keyword-rich text links to index your site, consider applying an additional text link navigation menu at the top or bottom of each page along with your fancy navigation. Most importantly make sure you match text links with the keywords in the title tags of linked pages. For example, if you are linking to your "fancy food" product page, match the text link with the first keywords listed in the title tag of that page. In this example, the first words in the title tag may be "fancy foods" and all incoming text links to that page would also read Fancy Foods. This tells both your website visitors and the spiders exactly what each page within your website is about. It’s true that you want to vary keyword text for incoming links from external websites whenever possible, but remember that we are focusing on internal links. Staying consistent helps not only from a search engine perspective but also aids website navigation for users.

It's MOST important to add a sitemap link to your text link navigation menu. You don’t always know how visitors end up at your website so make sure that no matter how they arrive, visitors and the spiders can crawl to every one of your pages.

Establishing a proper internal link structure is vital and easy to apply. Remember that having an excessive number of outbound links can dilute the link value you're spreading to your own internal pages. Limit the number of outgoing links from your pages as much as possible and keep all incoming and outgoing links as relevant to your website as possible. It's also important to consider human navigation when designing your text navigation throughout your website a happy visitor returns and makes recommendations.

Now the fact is that none of this does any good if you don’t have a sitemap that complies with both Google and Yahoo. Login and l make sure they are indexing each of your pages. While getting pages indexed in Google and Yahoo does not guarantee keyword rankings within the search engine results pages it will provide you with needed information to determine your next step in your overall SF0 strategy.