Importance of internal linking or interlinking in SEO

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What is an internal link?
Internal links, also known as interlinking , are all those links within a website that point to another page or resource within the same website, thus facilitating user navigation.

Types of internal links
These internal links can be of various types. Personally, I like to classify them into two types:

Structural links : These are links that belong to any structure, and are therefore repeated on all the pages of the website or in a set of them. For example, links in the navigation menu or footer, in a sidebar, etc.
Contextual links : These are links that are inserted into a text and are therefore surrounded by a context. As you will now see, these are the links that are most useful at an SEO level . On the one hand, because you can play with the anchor text ( the text that contains the link), and on the other hand because Google and the rest of the search engines use the text that surrounds that link to give it greater meaning.
Advantages and importance of internal links at SEO level
All search engines crawl the internet, jumping from link to link to discover new pages and include them in their results. Or to re-crawl a page they already knew about in search of updates. So, the first thing to keep in mind is that internal links guide search engine bots when they crawl your website. And so, the more internal links a page has, in theory that page will be more relevant.

This is why the pages we include in the navigation menu should be the most important ones in the project, since they will receive a link from all the pages on the website. The same goes for the footer, but here we usually include links of a legal or about-us nature.

1. Page Rank: Links convey authority
In order to fully understand how internal links work, it is essential to know what Page Rank is and how it works. Page Rank is a system patented by Google, through which they assign a numerical value to each page of a website based on the quantity and quality of links it obtains from third-party websites or from the website itself. The higher the Page Rank, the more likely it is to rank high in Google results. The concept is very easy to understand: “ if everyone links to this page, it is more relevant than the rest, and there is a greater probability that any user will end up on it ”. Therefore, each page is assigned a Page Rank value, and it is transmitted through the links it contains, whether internal or external.

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In fact, it is normal for the Home page to be the page with the highest authority within a website, since it is usually the one that attracts the most links. Both internal links through the typical logo that can be linked from the menu, and external links because many people link directly to it without bothering to find out if there is a more relevant page for their case.

In addition, it should be noted that a link does not transmit the same Page Rank, since depending on where it is located within the content and how relevant it is, there will be a greater or lesser probability that it will be clicked. Therefore, the authority or Page Rank transmitted by a link in the navigation menu is greater than one in the footer. Just as it has always been said that the higher up in the content a link is, the more valuable it will be, because its probability of being clicked is greater than if it is at the very end.

If you want to delve deeper into this topic, here is a post by Juan González Villa about one of the latest patents on Page Rank .

2. Link juice: you can decide which pages receive greater authority
The concept that derives from this transmission of authority through links is interior designers email database called link juice . And the truth is that it couldn't be more graphic, since what it tells us is that if a page has, for example, an authority value of 100 and links to only 4 pages, it is transmitting 25 to each page. And if one of those pages links to another 5, for example, it is transmitting 5 of that authority, diluting little by little between link and link.

Now, thanks to internal linking you can perfectly control which pages on your website receive the most authority, and analyze it with tools like Screaming Frog .

link juice in internal linking
3. Anchor text: internal linking vs external linking
We mentioned earlier that the anchor text is the text used to link to another page. Well, it is important for you to know that search engines use this text to know what the page it points to is about. And to be more specific, it uses this text to position the page it points to using that same text. That is, if for example I want to position a page for the keyword “ hairdresser in Madrid ” (I have to go to the hairdresser right now and that is the first thing that came to mind), and I use that same word as anchor text in different texts to link to it, search engines understand that I want to position that page for “ hairdresser in Madrid ”.

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WARNING! While this technique is a recommended practice for internal linking, it is a risky technique for external linking as it is considered an attempt at manipulation and may result in penalties from Google or other search engines.

However, if you are doing link building techniques and getting contextual links, it is important that the keywords you want to promote are contained in the same paragraph as the link to your page. Remember, these are contextual links, and Google uses the context surrounding the link.

4. Anchor text: use keywords to improve positions
As I mentioned before, this is a very versatile SEO technique, because I can vary the anchor text in the internal links to promote related keywords. Continuing with the example: hair salon in central Madrid , cheap hair salon in Madrid , the best hair salon in Madrid , etc. This is where, in my opinion, lies the great advantage of using internal links well in any SEO project. Knowing how to take advantage of them.

For example, if you have already optimized the texts of a page to the maximum, and you have included your keywords in the Title, headings, etc., but you see that you are not managing to improve its positioning, a good practice is to analyze the contents of your website to find where you can include internal links that point to that page. Whenever I publish a page in any of my projects, the next thing I do is look for internal links that point to it. First, because I am going to speed up its indexing process, and second, because in this way I transmit authority to it from the moment I publish it.

Another practical example in any SEO project could be to analyze the keywords where you appear on the second page, and try to attack the top 10 of Google by including more internal links that point to those pages , using those keywords as anchor text. At this point, it is very useful to use an Excel control, as a matrix, to point out the links that you put from one page to another, and at the end know which pages have more or less links.

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5. First Link Theory: Only the First Anchor Text Counts
To finish the job, we need to take into account what is known as the “first link theory ”. In the previous link, the great Lino Uruñuela explains it well. What this theory says, and it has obviously been proven, is that Google only uses the anchor text of the first link in order to position the destination page for that anchor text. Because the two links will transmit authority.

So now you know, for the purposes of using anchor text to boost keywords, consider only the first link to that page if you include several. And the links in the navigation menu? I don't have an official answer, but based on my experience I will tell you that Google ignores them, because in my projects I have been playing with different anchor texts having the page in the menu, and I have improved the positions of those keywords.

However, SEO evolves at lightning speed, and finding these kinds of nuances in how Google currently works can be a difficult task. We often rely on our own experience, and each project is unique. This internal linking technique may work very well for you in one project, and in another you may barely notice any changes. The magic of SEO!

6. Dofollow vs Nofollow
Finally, I just had to explain that not all links pass authority . There is an HTML tag that we can include both in the head so that it applies to all the links on the page, and at an individual level for a specific link.

If we do not indicate anything, the link is considered to be followed by search engine bots. That is, it is considered a Dofollow link. But if we do not want a particular link to transmit authority, we can include this HTML tag so that bots do not follow the link, and therefore it does not transmit authority.