Do you want to maximise the SEO advantages of internal links? If so, what are the best practises?
Internal links are crucial for search engine optimisation. (SEO). They aid in the discovery of your content by search engines, which elevates them in search results.
The best practises for internal linking for SEO are outlined in this article.
How Does Internal Linking Improve SEO in WordPress?
Internal links connect pages on your own website. Internal linking is crucial for the SEO of your WordPress site. They aid web crawlers like Google in finding fresh content to index and rank on your website.
In general, a page is more likely to rank higher in search results the more links that point to it. As a result, you can use internal links to direct visitors to key pages on your website and boost their traffic.
Internal links also improve user experience by making it simple for visitors to find relevant articles. This may also lower your bounce rate and boost pageviews.
Having said that, let’s look at the SEO best practises for adding internal links to WordPress sites. A table of contents has been added because this is a lengthy manual to make it easier to navigate.
- Make Internal Linking a Habit
- Monitor Your Internal Link Performance in WordPress
- Improve Your WordPress Site’s Internal Linking With a Plugin
- Display a List of Your Most Popular Posts in WordPress
- Create List Posts That Roundup Other Articles in WordPress
- Get Google Sitelinks for Your WordPress Site
- Preload Links in WordPress for Faster Loading Speeds
- Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress
- Update Internal Link URLs When Moving a Site to a New Domain
- Use MediaWiki Syntax to Quickly Add Internal Links in WordPress
- Track Which Internal Links Are Clicked in WordPress
- Enable Breadcrumbs in WordPress or WooCommerce
1. Make Internal Linking a Habit
We advise you to practise linking to your older articles from your more recent ones.
It’s a fantastic way to create a contextual connection between your recent and archived posts. You can also pass relevant link juice to your older articles using this method.
Internal linking is so crucial to SEO that it is included in our pre-publish blog post checklist for WPBeginner writers.
Every time you publish, you can edit older articles to include links to your more recent content. Many well-known bloggers spend time each week or month adding internal links that lead to fresh content.
This will help you increase the number of visitors to your site, their average time on it, and ultimately the SEO ranking of each of your blog posts and web pages.
WordPress makes it simple to conduct a search within the post editor for previous entries. Click the link button in the toolbar that appears after selecting the text to which you want to link.
You’ll see a text pop-up below the words you’ve highlighted. In order to find the older articles you want to link to, simply start typing.
See our beginner’s guide to adding a link in WordPress for more information.
2. Monitor Your Internal Link Performance in WordPress
Utilizing a tool like the Links Report in Google Search Console will help you see how well your website is performing in terms of links for SEO purposes. This is a good place to start when figuring out how to enhance internal linking on your website.
You can see how many pages link to this page in the Links Report. If pages with more internal links are ranked higher than posts with many internal links, you can compare it to other pages and see if that is the case.
You can start including internal links to the pages that you want to rank higher if you discover that posts with more links do indeed perform better. For more information, see our guide on how to use Google Search Console to increase traffic to your website.
Just be sure to link to the article only when it is appropriate. A poor user experience is produced when links are added in inappropriate places.
Observing which keywords are rising or falling in rank is another way to track the effects of internal linking. With the Search Statistics feature in All in One SEO, this is incredibly simple.
All in One SEO will retrieve your Google Search Console data and present it under All in One SEO » Search Statistics as soon as you connect the plugin with Google Search Console.
A graph of the keyword positions for your website can be seen in the keyword positions chart.
The overview box for the keyword rankings is located below this. This displays your top 10 keywords, which are very likely to be clicked if you use them as internal links.
3. Improve Your WordPress Site’s Internal Linking With a Plugin
It is frequently quicker to add internal links in WordPress using an internal linking plugin if you are unsure of which posts you want to link to.
Use of All in One SEO is advised. It has a special Link Assistant feature that enables you to add links to your previous and current content without opening the post. Additionally, it offers extensive link reports, link recommendations, and much more.
See our instructions on how to correctly set up All in One SEO for WordPress to learn how to configure the plugin. Just go to All in One SEO » Link Assistant in your WordPress dashboard after that.
Every link on your website will be crawled by Link Assistant, which will then display a detailed list report.
You will see a summary of the links along with total counts for internal, external, and affiliate links in the report. Additionally, it will display the number of abandoned posts that have not yet received a link from another article or page.
For thorough details on each of your links, switch to the Links Report tab. With columns for internal, external, and affiliate links, this list of all your posts and pages is available to you.
Additionally, it will display a number of suggestions for link placements.
You can access more information by selecting the right arrow button next to a post or page. This will display all links arranged in various tabs. Without directly editing a post or page, you can quickly view link suggestions and add links from the suggestions tab.
You can find more opportunities for internal linking with the aid of Link Assistant.
In addition to seeing the list of orphaned posts so you can link to them, the “Linking Opportunities” tab offers advice on how to make your website’s internal linking more effective.
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is another plugin that is helpful for internal linking because it can help you keep track of links within your article.
For instance, it alerts you when your article contains too many or too few internal links and offers recommendations on how to make your links stronger.
If you are working on articles with other authors, this tool will also be helpful. If the article contains internal links to other posts on your website, editors can quickly identify them.
In our guide on how to use the SEO Writing Assistant in WordPress, we demonstrate step-by-step how to use this plugin to enhance your SEO.
4. Display a List of Your Most Popular Posts in WordPress
In order to direct users to the articles that other users have already found useful, you can use a WordPress plugin called popular posts. These plugins generate a list of internal links to your most well-liked content on their own.
Your most successful posts are typically those that receive the most attention, so they are more likely to boost user engagement, conversion rates, and revenue. They offer a good chance to internal link to some of your less well-liked articles.
For instance, the feature in MonsterInsights lets you display your most popular articles wherever you want on your WordPress website. To display articles inside your content, you can also use inline popular posts.
The Popular Post Widget can be used to display articles in the sidebar or at the end of your content. You can even showcase your top-performing products anywhere on your eCommerce store using MonsterInsights.
Our guide on how to display popular posts in WordPress has more information.
5. Create List Posts That Roundup Other Articles in WordPress
Making roundups of your current content is another way to increase the number of internal links on your WordPress blog. In order to provide a thorough overview of the topic, you accomplish this by writing a new post that lists your best articles on the subject.
You’re actually reading one of those posts right now.
Fortunately, there are a few plugins that simplify this process. With WP Tasty Roundups, for instance, you can easily turn your existing content into appealing posts that rank in search results.
All you need to do is type one or two keywords into the built-in search functionality, and the plugin will automatically pull images, titles, descriptions, and links from relevant posts into your roundup list.
6. Get Google Sitelinks for Your WordPress Site
Sitelinks are a function of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), which allow for the inclusion of further sub-pages beneath a website in the search results.
Internal links to the website’s most visited pages are frequently found here.
The top 3 Google results receive the most clicks. Sitelinks for a website occupy the same amount of space as three standard search listings when they are displayed.
Your overall click-through rate significantly rises when your site is given this much screen real estate. Simply put, the keyword will bring more visitors to your website.
Though there is no surefire way to convince Google to display sitelinks for your website, creating a tonne of internal links to your most significant articles and pages undoubtedly helps.
Our guide on how to get Google sitelinks for your WordPress site has more information.
7. Preload Links in WordPress for Faster Loading Speeds
A browser feature called link preloading loads links in the background before a site visitor clicks on them. Your website appears to load faster as a result, which can help with SEO.
Your visitors are more likely to stay on your website longer when your internal pages are preloaded because loading speed is one of the leading indicators for search engine rankings and user engagement.
Because they load quickly, they are more likely to view more pages.
Using the Flying Pages plugin is the simplest way to preload links. To ensure that preloading won’t break your site or even slow it down, it merely adds intelligent preloading.
In our tutorial on how to preload links in WordPress for faster loading times, we walk you through the process of setting up the plugin step-by-step.
8. Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress
Broken links hurt the SEO of your website. Internal links are used by search engine crawlers to find new content on your website, so a broken link can prevent a new post from being indexed.
Due to the 404 error that is returned by broken links, they also have a negative effect on user experience. A visitor may leave a website if they click on a link but can’t find the page they were looking for.
Using All in One SEO, you can quickly identify and fix broken links on your WordPress website.
A robust redirection manager from AIOSEO enables you to set up permanent 301 redirects to fix broken links and assists in tracking 404 errors on your website.
See our comprehensive guide on how to locate and correct broken links in WordPress for more information.
9. Update Internal Link URLs When Moving a Site to a New Domain
Update all internal link URLs if you ever move your WordPress website to a new domain name. If not, there will be a lot of broken links.
By going to the Settings » General page from your WordPress dashboard, you should begin by updating the WordPress address and site URL.
The URLs of every internal link added to your posts and pages must also be changed, though.
Our detailed instructions on how to quickly update URLs when moving your WordPress site will show you how to do this in the simplest way possible.
10. Use MediaWiki Syntax to Quickly Add Internal Links to WordPress
Using the most effective technique can help you develop the habit of internal linking. WordPress now supports standard MediaWiki syntax for adding internal links quickly when creating or editing posts as of version 6.0.
Now, you can quickly add links by following the post title with two square brackets. You can see how simple it is to use this feature within WordPress in the animated gif below.
The link will use the post title as an anchor and automatically add the appropriate URL to the content.
The quickest way to create an internal link is to use the double square bracket method if you know the post’s title (or even just a portion of it).
11. Track Which Internal Links Are Clicked in WordPress
Monitoring which internal links your visitors are clicking on your website is one of the best ways to learn how users interact with it. You can find out which internal links your visitors are most interested in using tools like MonsterInsights.
The way in which you add internal links to your posts and pages can then be improved by using these insights.
In our tutorial on how to track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress, we provide comprehensive instructions on tracking various types of links.
Check out our tutorial on tracking user engagement in WordPress if you’d like more information.
12. Enable Breadcrumbs in WordPress or WooCommerce
A hierarchical navigation menu presented as a trail of links is referred to as breadcrumb navigation.
It is frequently employed as an additional navigation method that enables users to move up the website’s hierarchy of pages.
Due to the fact that they define a clear route or trail to the page you are on, breadcrumbs are excellent for internal linking.
These breadcrumbs also show up in search results, which gives your website a boost in rankings.
In our tutorial on how to display breadcrumb navigation links in WordPress, we go over two ways to add breadcrumbs. Most users will find Method 1—using All in One SEO—to be simpler.
Additionally, you can enable breadcrumbs for your WooCommerce products using All in One SEO. See the fifth tip in our WooCommerce SEO made simple guide for more information.
We sincerely hope that this tutorial has taught you the best internal linking techniques for SEO. You might also want to look at our comprehensive guide to WordPress security or browse our list of advice on how to drive more traffic to your blog.
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