Why Internal Link Auditing is Vital

So we all know part of SEO is building internal links and therefore spend time and effort in doing just that, however, what tends to happen is we then walk away and assume that the job is done and we can move onto another task.

But, this really isn’t a hit, and hope scenario and the results yield will be so much better if we spend time actually paying attention to what we have.

Here is why. 

Search Engine Crawlers Use Them

This is brilliant news if you have strong and well constructed internal links; however, if you don’t, you will totally confuse them and end up with lower rankings. So, firstly and this might seem obvious, make sure they are not broken links. 404 errors are something that many SEO tools can help you pick up, and broken links can quickly occur if you move a page, change the navigation or rename a page so be sure to check this frequently.

This applies to redirected pages as well, if you want the crawlers to, well, crawl rather than run through your pages, redirecting is the way to go. But as you really do not want this to happy clean up any redirected pages.

Search Engines Define Important Content 

Internal links are also useful for signposting our most important content. Clearly, you want to link to this content as much as possible so that we can get the search engines to understand what we actually do.

So, start by making sure you have the most important pages linked in the main navigation structure. Drop down menus are good for this, and leave the page clean and easy to read and bring your most important content high up the structure so it can be seen easily by the search bots.

The move to your footer navigation and repeat your most important links here.

Use breadcrumb navigation as part of the internal links, this can get complex, but it is well worth doing. In terms of the layout having more than one column on your pages is another great way to get your internal links noticed. 

Internal Links Are Vital for Conversion 

Understand your customers and how they use the website gives you the opportunity to promote your internal links in the best way. Basically advertising within your own site, you can utilise banners and sliders to promote the important links on the pages that get the highest hits.

Now, the homepage is an obvious candidate for many sites, but if you are not sure you need to hit the analytics and find out which pages are visited most.

This works well on blog pages, as well as the main post content, so consider sidebars that have advertising linking back to your key pages in order to maximise the use of important internal links. 

Just remember however you do this to schedule regular checking to make sure you haven’t inadvertently broken or moved a link rendering it useless otherwise your efforts, however well-meaning, could be in vain.