Internal linking structure is commonly known as website navigation and it is an important part of a Search Engine Optimisation. Internal linking is a fundamental requirement for your end user and search engine spiders. The internal link structure of a website is a search engine optimisation factor that is often overlooked by webmasters.
The internal link structure of your site can have a massive impact on the ranking in search engines. For bigger sites internal linking becomes very important. You can effectively improve the ranking of the internal web pages by making changes to internal links within your site. You are actually boosting the ranking of certain pages by diverting the link juice from important pages of the site.

When creating a website, the structure is very important because it is a key factor for search engine optimisation. If your site is themed and well linked internally, you have a higher chance of ranking well in the search engines. Within your site the internal link structure can allow you to spread the link of your homepage to the pages on your site.

The more link power a page receives, the more likely it is that the page will get high rankings on search engines. Your internal link structure allows you to direct search engines to your most important pages and is a good SEO marketing technique.

How to improve the internal link structure of your website

There are several things that you can do to improve the rankings of special pages on your website:

• Create Relevant categories and sub-categories: Including relevant links are important to get higher ranks in search results this can be done by categorising links properly. Big online stores like John Lewis have used this in the best manner for making it easier for search engines as well as humans to read, understand and rank well.
• Make your site Accessible: Always make sure that all important web pages of your site are easily accessible and not more than two clicks from your home page. Search engine spiders also prefer pages to visit or index which are just a few clicks away from your home page.
• Add No-follow Attribute: Add no-follow attribute to all links that are not so important for the purpose of search engine rankings. If you know how you are going to control the flow of page rank to other internal pages of you site then you create a strategy by adding no follow tag. The nofollow tag is added to links to tell search engines that they should not pass on page rank to the linked page. The point worth noting is that the nofollow tag should be added to links which go to unimportant pages page. This will prevent wastage of the ranking power on unimportant pages. For example, web pages that include terms and conditions, privacy policy etc. of your website do not have much importance for ranking. It is better to add a no-follow attribute to them as these pages do not need to be listed in search engines.
• · Guide search engines robots with proper Meta Tag: Using robots.txt file or the robots meta tag can also help to improve ranking as it helps to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages (secure pages) from indexing. If search engines don’t crawl your pages which are not so important then there will be great possibility that they can take a closer look to the pages for which you want to be ranked well on major search engines.
• Keep close look on broken links:   In one of our posts earlier we explained benefits of using google webmaster login. Using it you can do a quick scan  of your website just in 5 minutes and find if there are any errors.  It is very important that your all internal links should be error free so always check your website that it doesn’t contain any errors like 404 not found errors etc. If errors are found then immediately correct them or redirect these links to the most appropriate pages. You can use online web tools like Xenu to check errors in internal links of your website.
• Create a site Map – Creating a well explained site map is helpful for both search engine robots and website visitors. Make sure you create a static site map as well as an XML site map. Sitemaps offer the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site. Of course, you cannot expect that search engines will rush right away to index your changed pages but certainly the changes will be indexed faster, compared to when you don’t have a sitemap.

By optimising your link structure and how your web pages pass their link power, you can influence how search engines treat the content of your website and therefore rank highly on your web pages. After optimizing the link structure of your website, you can start link building campaigns to get more and more quality links for your website that will help to get higher rank to your site. If you have a well optimized internal and external link structure, then it will be hard to any other website to beat your site in terms of ranking.

There are a wide range of search engine marketing tools and it is important to apply the right strategy for your business needs. SysComm is a team of SEO experts with excellent knowledge of Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, online reputation management and has been using white hat SEO techniques for years. We provide affordable SEO service packages which include creating Internet marketing strategies, SEO consultancy services and search engine marketing plans. Please contact us to discuss your internet marketing strategies or to claim your free social media marketing analysis report card today!

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