How Do I Identify the Most Impactful Internal Linking Opportunities?

• Overview
• What I Think
• Deep Dive: Finding the Best Internal Link Opportunities
• 8-Step Action Plan for Identifying Internal Link Opportunities
• Quick Solutions
• About Us

Overview

Internal linking helps users and search engines find what they need on your site. This leads to more content crawled and indexed by search engines, and more time spent on your site by visitors.

What I Think

Many websites struggle with scattered or inefficient links. This makes navigation challenging, and in turn, decreases the effectiveness of the content. 

Finding the best internal linking opportunities starts with analyzing the current structure of the  website. 

Be sure to look at the big picture of your internal content structure and navigation, which you can improve through a technique we call “SEO siloing.” 

One way to get a clear picture of a website’s current linking strategy is using tools to get a visual representation, such as a link graph, and pinpoint areas for improvement. Once you have that, you can see where there are gaps. 

Some of the things you will want to do as you make your internal linking stronger: 

• Find and analyze orphan pages to see if they can be linked to. 
• Link to high-priority content for both engagement and ranking.
• Use anchor text correctly in your contextual links.. 

When you are done with the initial links project, remember that this process is never really done. 

You will want to conduct regular audits and revisions to the internal linking strategy so you can continually improve both user experience and SEO progress. 

Deep Dive: Finding the Best Internal Link Opportunities

Internal linking is all about connecting related pages within a website to improve navigation for website visitors and search engines. 

When done well, it not only helps users find the content they need on their information-seeking journey but also helps search engines understand your content (which assists with crawling, indexing and ranking webpages).

Conduct an Audit

To begin, identify linking opportunities by doing a comprehensive audit of your current links using tools like our SEOToolSet or another SEO tool.  

These tools can help you visualize your site’s linking structure and highlight areas that could be improved with new linking strategies.

Prioritize the Action Plan

Think about how you will prioritize pages for your linking strategy. A good rule of thumb is to start with pages that hold significant content value or contribute majorly to your site’s goals. 

These might include product pages, foundational content or high-conversion landing pages. Ensuring these types of pages are linked to support their visibility and ranking potential. 

Identify Orphan Pages

The next step involves identifying orphan pages. These are pages that are not connected to other pages within your site. 

Orphan pages can be discovered through a site crawl and should be integrated into the linking structure if they are still relevant.

When you link these pages from relevant high-traffic pages, you can increase their visibility. 

Be Diligent with Anchor Text

Anchor text is a part of a good internal linking strategy because it provides context about the linked page. 

In turn, this improves the user experience and helps to support keyword relevance. 

What this looks like in practice is to avoid generic phrases like “click here” and instead use relevant words or phrases that describe the target page’s content. 

Create XML Sitemaps/Site Maps

Creating an XML sitemap and submitting it to search engines is another effective step in helping search engine bots discover the content on your site. 

This is because a sitemap acts as a guide for search engines to identify all accessible pages, including newly linked ones. 

Complement this with an HTML site map for website visitors so that they have a navigation aid as needed. 

Together, these two tools ensure comprehensive coverage of your internal linking.

Rinse and Repeat

Monitoring and refining your internal linking strategy should continue as the website evolves. 

This looks something like using analytics to track the performance of your changes, and looking for new opportunities for links. 

A data-driven approach helps you make targeted adjustments over time.

8-Step Action Plan for Identifying Internal Link Opportunities

Here are eight steps for finding, analyzing and acting on internal linking opportunities to boost user experience and SEO performance:

1. Conduct a website crawl using tools like SEOToolSet or Screaming Frog and map out your current internal link structure for analysis.
2. Create a prioritized list of pages that require better linking. You can do this by using analytics to determine high-traffic and important pages and creating a strategy to distribute links to underlinked pages, including orphan pages.
3. Train your team on best practices for future linking.
4. As you are optimizing pages, be sure to optimize contextual links with relevant and clear anchor text. This includes replacing any generic anchor text with descriptive phrases.
5. Create an HTML sitemap for improved user navigation, and develop and submit an XML sitemap to search engines.
6. Regularly audit internal links to maintain optimal structure. This may include using heatmaps to analyze user interaction with links, performing A/B testing to refine link placement and testing the functionality of all updated links.
7. Monitor the performance of linked pages in search rankings and set periodic reminders to reassess linking opportunities.
8. Document changes and results for ongoing analysis and improvements.

Unlock your website’s full potential through expert internal linking strategies:

Contact Us Now to Schedule Your Personalized Consultation!

Quick Solutions

• How do I ensure my contextual links are helping users and search engines equally?

About Us

Bruce Clay Inc. has been at the forefront of SEO and digital marketing innovation since 1996. Our commitment to technical SEO has helped countless businesses achieve online success. With services ranging from SEO and PPC to advanced content marketing, we tailor strategies to meet your unique goals. Learn more on our About Us page.

Bruce Clay is founder and president of Bruce Clay Inc., a global digital marketing firm providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media marketing, SEO-friendly web architecture, and SEO tools and education. Connect with him on LinkedIn or through the BruceClay.com website.

See Bruce's author page for links to connect on social media.