Linking is the architecture that binds your website together. The way you construct your linking directly influences a host of diverse SEO factors, including crawl ratio, rankings, conversions, user behavior, site structure, and almost everything else on your site. The fundamental importance of linking has never wavered. But the linking strategies that SEOs are most familiar with have changed with the advent of larger sites, JavaScript crawling, and new ranking impacts. In our latest webinar, we’ll show you how to bridge the gap between new and old linking strategies to maximize ROI with the Botify Methodology!

1. Webinar
October 2018
How to Optimize
Your Internal
Linking with Botify?

2. Webinar
October 2018
Alpha Keita
Search Data
Strategist

3. Webinar
October 2018
Will Lau
Sr. Search Data
Strategist

4. Internal Linking - Why it Matters
Internal linking is one of the key factors to a website’s successful SEO.
Linking is what allows indexing robots to discover a website’s URLs.
Internal linking also indicates powerful pages according to the website structure (notion of internal
PageRank), which would ideally correspond to strategic pages.
In this webinar, we'll look at:
•Measuring linking quality,
•Identifying PageRank ‘leaks’,
•Detecting problem URLs.
4

5. Types of Navigation for Internal Linking
A website has three types of SEO navigation:
•Descendant navigation, starting from the home page and creating a pathway to the entirety of your
page inventory. This pathway must be as short as possible.
•Ascendant navigation, which involves starting from the low-level pages (such as products, generally
long tail) to generate large volumes of links towards upper-level pages (such as categories, which are
generally top/middle tail page types).
•Horizontal navigation, which allows you to generate more links to deep pages that only receive a
limited amount of links via descendant navigation.
5

6. Internal PageRank and PageRank ‘leaks’
•Although Google doesn’t provide PageRank details for each URL (the ToolBar PageRank - TBR - was
cut in April 2016 but hadn’t been updated for years anyway), PageRank is nevertheless still central to
Google’s algorithm.
•The original PageRank formula was public, and it is certainly possible to calculate a page’s PageRank
on your website’s scale (meaning excluding all additional details based on external linking). This is
what we refer to as Internal PageRank (IPR).
•When analyzing your crawl, Botify calculates the internal PageRank for each page, as Google does (on
a web-wide scale).
•Calculating this IPR lets you check that your website is geared towards strategic pages. It can also
help you measure “PageRank leaks”, meaning the power given over to non-strategic pages.
6

7. Measuring Link Quality
7

8. Descendant Navigation: Assess Depth
8
As descendant
navigation aims to
allow users to explore
the full inventory of
pages as quickly as
possible, check that
your depth levels aren’t
too high.

9. Descendant Navigation: Check PageRank Spread
9
Effective descendant
navigation must also
ensure PageRank is rolled
out to the deepest pages.
In this example, you can
see that approximately ⅔
of the internal PageRank
has been allocated to the
first two depth levels.
This could be due to the
heavy menus found across
all pages, which distribute
a huge number of links
across the main pages.

10. Ascendant Navigation: Check the Average Number of Inlinks
for Top/Middle Tail Pages
10
Using a custom
metrics, check the
average number of
inlinks (incoming
links) for the first
depth level of each
segment.
If your ascendant
navigation is
effective, the
top/middle tail
pages should be
receiving a high
number of inlinks.

11. Horizontal Navigation: Check Inlinks for Deep Pages
11
By filtering with respect to the segment
that corresponds to your deep pages,
check the average number of inlink they
are receiving.
In this example, the deep pages receive
an average of 12.5 inlinks, but 435,609
URLs only receive one.

12. Internal PageRank Breakdown
Using a metrics table, check
how internal PageRank is
broken down for each
segment.
If your internal linking is
cohesive, the PageRank
must be primarily distributed
to pages with the most
potential. In this example,
you can see that 19% of the
internal PageRank is
allocated to the “videos”
segment, with low traffic
volume.

13. Assessing Linking Breakdown
This graph lets you assess
if your internal linking is
evenly balanced.
In this example, you’ll
notice that 12% of the
website’s pages only
receive one inlink.
46% of the pages receive
under 10 inlinks.

14. Monitor Outlink Volume
While there are
no real
restrictions in
terms of the
number of
outbound links
you can put on a
page, check
there aren’t too
many.

15. Measuring Diversity in Anchor Texts
Variations in anchoring is also central
to linking. The more varied your
anchoring, the more varied the URLs,
semantically-speaking.
In this example, you’ll notice that there
is very little variation in the link
anchoring.

16. Anatomy of an Active Page
By playing around with the filters, you can see the differences in linking between an active and
inactive page. In this example, an active page receives an average of 68.8 inlinks, compared to
just 19.5 for an inactive page.

17. Check URLs with the Highest PageRank
It isn’t rare to find that some non-optimized URLs (contact page, legal notices page, etc.) have a very high
volume of internal PageRank. Using the URL Explorer lets you check for anomalies by ranking URLs by
PageRank.

18. Assess
PageRank leaks

19. What is PageRank Leak?
In your linking, you may link to not compliant pages or pages blocked by robots.txt,
or you may use nofollow links.
The PageRank for these links are lost as a result, and cannot draw on your SEO
strategic pages, which is what we call “PageRank leaking”.
Although it may not be possible to be entirely “leak-free”, it’s important you measure
this phenomenon and restrict it as far as possible.

20. Assess PageRank Leaks to Non-Compliant Pages
By combining filters
and custom metrics,
you’ll be able to
assess PageRank
leaks caused by links
to Non-Compliant
pages.
In this example, 4% of
the PageRank is
funneled to Not
Compliant pages that
are useless from an
SEO point of view.

21. Assess PageRank Funneled Externally
You can also
measure PageRank
funneled to external
URLs as well as
PageRank redirected
to pages blocked via
robots.txt.

22. Follow vs. Nofollow Distribution
Understand if you
are managing your
internal linking
strategy with
follow/nofollows.

23. Mobile-First Index
and Internal Linking

24. Mobile-First Index and Internal Linking

25. Mobile-First Index and Internal Linking According to John Muller

26. Ensuring Mobile Structure Crawlability
Make sure that:
● Your Mobile structure is not too deep,
● Each Mobile strategic page is
receiving enough Inlinks,
● There’s not too much PageRank
dilution in your Mobile Structure

27. Javscript Indexation
Issues

28. Javascript Indexation Issues
Client had issues with
indexing specific page
types.

29. Increasing Discovery of Pages w/ JS
After fixing JS loaded
links, you can see where
Google started crawling
more often.

30. Improving Crawl Ratio of Strategic Pages

31. JS Websites and Internal Linking
10x!

32. Identifying &
Correcting Issues

33. Tweak Links to Non-Compliant Pages
The URL Explorer allows you
to identify links to Not
Compliant pages.

34. Investigate Nofollow Links
Use the URL Explorer to identify nofollow links.

35. Identify KPIs that Impact SEO

36. Based on Impact of SEO - Identify Issues

37. Recap

38. Subject Comment
Measuring
linking quality
With Botify Analytics, study:
● your descendant navigation:
○ Compliant/Not Compliant URLs by Depth,
○ Sum of Internal Pagerank by Depth by Segment,
● your ascendant navigation:
○ Average number of inlinks from the structure to the first depth level of each
segment
● your horizontal navigation:
○ Inlinks for deep pages.
You can also measure your Internal PageRank breakdown by segment, the average number
of internal/external outlinks by segment, the variety in anchoring.
Comparing diverse anchor text, linking etc. for active and inactive pages can also bring
interesting insights.
Recap (1/2)

39. Subject Comment
Identifying
PageRank ‘leaks’
With Botify Analytics, study:
● PageRank leaks caused by links to Not Compliant pages,
● PageRank funneled externally (disallowed in robots.txt or Out of scope),
● Nofollow links distribution.
Correcting
Issues
Corrective actions include:
● Deleting internal outlinks to Not Compliant Pages in the structure,
● Correcting internal nofollow outlinks in the structure.
● Diversify Link Anchor Texts
Recap (2/2)

40. Follow us: @Botify - #BotifyWebinar
Le Grand Prix du Search
June 14th - Paris
SMX East
October 24th-25th - NYC
BOTIFY COMES TO YOU!
Tech SEO Boost
November 29th- Boston
Trophées Ecommerce
October 15th - Paris
Questions?

41. Thank you
for your attention
Get in touch!
hello@botify.com