There is a ton of information out there about internal links. Most of it is a little bit difficult to understand. There are several different types of internal links:
- Contextual Links
- Navigational Links
- Image Links
- Footer Links
For the small business owner, we are going to talk about the most important type of internal links: contextual links.
What are contextual links?
Contextual links are found in text on a webpage. They are designed to tell users about other content that relates to the page that they are currently on. Let's say you are reading this blog about internal links. We might direct you to another blog on external links (backlinks). Or if you wanted to know EVERYTHING about internal links, we might direct you to our long, expert blog post on internal links.
Power Tip: In the examples above, our contextual internal links are all about getting the user to the page where we talk about the topic, hence the short anchor text that is about the page they are being sent to.
Why are you reading this abridged version about internal linking?
You are reading this shorter blog about internal linking because we believe that this will help you rank better for long-tail keywords.
Okay, what do I have to do when building internal links?
This part is easy. Just take a look at one of our industry pages, like our industry page for "wineries."
Then go to the bottom of the page and look at all the cities. You will see all of our location pages linked from here, like our Aurora, CO page.
Okay, you're interlinking your industry and location pages...why?
We can't possibly make a location page for every industry that we cover. By interlinking our industry pages and location pages, we make it easier for potential customers to find us via specific long tail searches. Instead of being found for "affordable SEO the woodlands," someone might do a search for "bankruptcy lawyer seo the woodlands." If you have ten industry pages for each city that you have a page for, you just increased your chance of being found by a factor of 10.
Give this strategy a try. It will work nicely for longer-tail searches and help your website, especially if your website has low backlinks and a lower domain authority.