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The Quickest Win in SEO – How to do Internal Linking the Right Way

Martin Hayman's presentation at BrightonSEO emphasizes the significance of effective internal linking for enhancing user experience and SEO performance. Key considerations include managing broken links, proper anchor text, and the placement of links for optimal results, as well as regular audits for anomalies in link attributes. The presentation highlights the positive impact that optimized internal linking can yield, with reported uplift in page performance.

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The Quickest Win in SEO – How to do Internal Linking the Right Way

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@martinhayman #BrightonSEO How todo internal linking the right way! Martin Hayman | Twylu SLIDESHARE.NET/MARTINHAYMAN @MARTINHAYMAN
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WHY IS INTERNALLINKING IMPORTANT?
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They give context tousers and search engines
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They can helpUX and conversion rate
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They can affect howoften pages get crawled
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They can signalthe importance of individual pages
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They pass authority frompage to page
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Can help resolvecannibalisation issues
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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Broken internal links
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Internal redirects
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ORPHANED PAGES
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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CRAWL DEPTH
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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ANCHOR TEXT
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THINK ABOUT LINKPLACEMENT (FIRST CLICK RULE)
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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CONTEXTUAL VS TEMPLATE
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Relax and don’tworry too much about this
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ALREADY IN MAINNAV
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THE RESULTS 25% upliftacross level two and level three category pages
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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OUTLINKS
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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ANOMALIES High Incoming, LowOutgoing Low Incoming, High Outgoing
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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PASSING POWER
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KEY ELEMENTS ANDCONSIDERATIONS
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BUT FIRST…
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SITE:
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@martinhayman #BrightonSEO
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WHEN USING SITE: Whatterms to use? What anchor variations to use for links?
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EXAMPLES

Editor's Notes

#2 Today I'm going to talk to you about one of the quickest wins in SEO... and that is internal linking
#3 Just a very quick slide about me... I'm the founder of Wild Sprout (an online marketing agency for ecommerce businesses) and Nxt Level Ecommerce (ecommerce marketing events and also a free ecommerce newsletter) And I'm also the co-founder of Twylu (internal linking tool) and RanckCaddy (an affordable rank tracker with added tools and actionable insights)
#4 We've got a lot to get through so I don't want to spend long on this... I think everyone knows how important IL is… ... but before I get into the how and some tips and examples ... let's just very briefly talk about the why
#5 Through anchor text, relevance, where they’re linked from…
#6 Often overlooked
#7 Important + valued pages are going to be crawled more often right? So this is important to bear in mind.
#8 And this is a big one. Can help prioritise and tell search engines what pages are more important
#9 https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/1227651891175329792
#10 And can determine which pages will benefit from link equity provided by backlinks.
#13 Pink line – hub page (never above page 4) Yellow lines – individual stories related to the World Cup
#17 Client Other factors like external links and content tweaks but there was VERY big focus on internal links [Search Volume = 100k]
#18 So… we know the why… let’s look at the Key Elements and Considerations...
#20 A sure-fire way to lower the perceived quality of your site is to... send search engines to loads of broken links. Find and fix these.
#21 Sitebulb
#22 Screaming Frog
#23 Twylu
#24 Users and search engines arrive at the right page, yes. But is it optimal… no. Really easy to fix so there should never be a reason to have loads of these. Internal links should always point directly to the end destination.
#25 Sitebulb
#26 Screaming Frog
#27 Twylu
#28 Another common issue… These are page that are live but not linked to anywhere on the site. The most common reason ... XML sitemap but not linked to on the site. So, should they have internal links to them on the site?? Or should they just be removed from the XML sitemap?? Something to check.
#29 My favourite tool for checking these is Sitebulb Visualised really well and easy to get to the root of the problem. This example here was an extreme example of orphaned pages being an issue. [Avis before – Orphaned]
#31 Probably all heard of the Rule of 3 clicks… No necessarily a hard and fast rule. May be reasons why pages would be deeper for good reason. But as general rule, it’s good to keep important pages within 3 clicks.
#32 Again we can check with Sitebulb Just through their URL explorer
#33 Can also check with Screaming Frog
#34 And Twylu Note: Twylu - Very much and internal linking focused tool... so only looks at crawl depth within content, not in header and footer So it’s a bit different to a general audit and is quite specific to internal linking.
#36 Obviously a really important element. Often different views about anchor text... Some say - keep it consistent. Some say always vary it. I’ve actually seen both methods work well... but I like to go mostly for consistency and then add in some variations… especially based on opportunities and low hanging fruit (chat more about later)
#37 Sitebulb
#38 Frog
#39 Twylu
#40 When placing anchors... Think about First Click rule For those who don’t know, this is based on testing that a number of people have done… …where they found that Google only take into account the first anchor used when a page is linked to multiple times… so something else to be aware of
#42 This is an example from Crunch... Back to our first click rule… Does Google only look at that main nav link anchor and ignore the contextual one? … I don’t think so. A few years ago, our friend John from Google... confirmed that Google evaluates links in the main content vs footer differently. So what I would say about this is…
#43 Don’t worry about it If something is important and deserves to be in the main nav, put it there. If you’re optimising your internal links contextually, just do it as if the main nav link wasn’t there And don’t overthink it.
#44 Great example from Emily Potter @ Search Pilot She asked this on Twitter. Internal Linking test... Linking from top level cats to lower level cats Had 2 groups of pages... Pages links are placed on, and the pages being linked to. And they wanted to test the impact on the LINKING pages as well as the pages being LINKED TO
#45 And they wanted to test these internal links DESPITE THEM ALREADY BEING IN THE MAIN NAV And that’s why I wanted to show this example... Good example of how main nav and content links are treated differently
#48 25% uplift to organic traffic across level two and level three category pages But what was interesting was… It wasn't just the sub-categories contributing to uplift It was ALSO the linking pages
#50 No hard and fast rules or set limits but make it natural for users Make it useful Don’t cram 100 links into a 1000 word post just to add more internal links. More likely to overwhelm users.
#51 …And again, you can check this on Sitebulb…
#52 Screaming Frog
#53 And Twylu
#55 Speaking of Anlomalies... Shout out to Kevin Indig for this one. He's spoken about this before And I think he refers to these as ‘Outliers’ But it’s basically UNUSUAL or perhaps UNOPTIMAL use of incoming and outgoing links High Incoming, Low Outgoing Low Incoming, High Outgoing
#56 You can check these by exporting crawl data And putting in Excel or Sheets. and then filtering the incoming and outgoing links. If you do this manually, you will have to gauge where to set those filters by looking at the highs, lows and averages. Then make a call on what you feel is too low, or too high, for either of those columns. This one is an example of High Incoming, Low Outgoing
#57 And this is an example of Low Incoming
#58 And this is something that has been built into Twylu and it’s all been worked out for you Which ever tool or method you use... It’s then a case of going through and seeing if this is a genuine concern or not. So, for example, why do these pages have a lot of outgoing links but only 1 incoming link? Is that ok? Should they be linked to more?
#60 Passing Power or Link Equity or PageRank This is the idea of finding pages with strong backlink profiles And then passing some of that power on via internal links.
#61 Ahrefs (or Majestic)
#62 Can also find these in Twylu It’s then a case of sifting through the URLs to look for suitable, relevant pages. And RELAVANCE IS KEY HERE. Don’t be linking from irrelevant pages just because they’re strong… because you won't see the same benefits.
#64 And a few key things to think about here… We want to think about the quantity and quality of the links we need… And well as relevance (remember, really important)
#65 But first… it’s a good idea to get your house in order So, if you haven’t already… Get an audit done… sort site out Sort any dup content Fix broken links Sort int redirects Look for unnecessary overuse (or even incorrect use) of canonicals Look for orphaned pages And so on We don’t want these things skewing our work when looking for new opportunities. Sorting will put you in much better place.
#66 We want to look for RELEVANT opportunities So the first thing we can try is a search using site: operator Sure everyone knows this but site: …
#67 Here’s an example. Now, a word of warning here… this isn’t perfect…
#68 Page 10 Labrador only mentioned in main nav
#69 I can try to can around this using the intext: operator But again, I’m seeing the same results. And in that 3rd result for example…
#70 I’m only seeing Labrador in the main nav. So it’s not perfect but it is a good way to start if you want to find some quick internal linking opportunities.
#71 Now, when using site: command we also need to think about… What terms to use? What anchor variations to use for links? This is where Google Search Console comes in
#73 You can then see the search terms driving that page clicks. These could be anchor text opportunities. Tip here is to… Look for low hanging fruit using a filter on positions. You could potentially help those rankings by using those as anchors.
#74 Now, this has all been built it into this page on Twylu. So for example, if we click View Opportunities in the bottom right there, Twylu will take the top Search Console terms and look for them around the rest of the site. If it find mentions but those pages aren’t already linking to this page, then it’ll be listed as an opportunity. And you can also add manual terms in the top right there. So clicking View Opportunities in this example give … these opportunities
#75 And we can see ‘Mugs’ is mentioned on 30 pages that don’t link to the Mugs page. And if we click into that…
#76 We can now see the contextual relevance around those opportunities. And that first one should clearly be linking to this page… So that can then be added as a task.
#77 To give you some food for thought, let’s look at some examples of internal linking in practice.
#78 Wayfair Making use of related searches at the bottom of the page.
#79 Argos – Sofa beds
#80 Argos – Sofa beds
#81 Argos
#82 Argos
#87 Amazon
#88 And then we have some examples from news publications BBC
#108 Links to relevant articles down the side there
#111 ALWAYS RELEVANT
#112 Close with some reminders and tips
#113 And fix them obviously
#114 Especially for important pages.
#115 And look for opportunities to improve or vary these.
#116 And don’t just rely on your main nav for internal linking
#118 But make sure they’re relevant!!!
#119 I’m going to finish off with a big tip here! - every time you’re adding new content… Look for internal pages to link TO And also look for old content to link FROM
#121 Thank you… Feel free to follow me on Twitter (my DMs are open). I’m also on Instagram And my email is there too, I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. Thanks.

Editor's Notes

#2 Today I'm going to talk to you about one of the quickest wins in SEO... and that is internal linking
#3 Just a very quick slide about me... I'm the founder of Wild Sprout (an online marketing agency for ecommerce businesses) and Nxt Level Ecommerce (ecommerce marketing events and also a free ecommerce newsletter) And I'm also the co-founder of Twylu (internal linking tool) and RanckCaddy (an affordable rank tracker with added tools and actionable insights)
#4 We've got a lot to get through so I don't want to spend long on this... I think everyone knows how important IL is… ... but before I get into the how and some tips and examples ... let's just very briefly talk about the why
#5 Through anchor text, relevance, where they’re linked from…
#6 Often overlooked
#7 Important + valued pages are going to be crawled more often right? So this is important to bear in mind.
#8 And this is a big one. Can help prioritise and tell search engines what pages are more important
#9 https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/1227651891175329792
#10 And can determine which pages will benefit from link equity provided by backlinks.
#13 Pink line – hub page (never above page 4) Yellow lines – individual stories related to the World Cup
#17 Client Other factors like external links and content tweaks but there was VERY big focus on internal links [Search Volume = 100k]
#18 So… we know the why… let’s look at the Key Elements and Considerations...
#20 A sure-fire way to lower the perceived quality of your site is to... send search engines to loads of broken links. Find and fix these.
#21 Sitebulb
#22 Screaming Frog
#23 Twylu
#24 Users and search engines arrive at the right page, yes. But is it optimal… no. Really easy to fix so there should never be a reason to have loads of these. Internal links should always point directly to the end destination.
#25 Sitebulb
#26 Screaming Frog
#27 Twylu
#28 Another common issue… These are page that are live but not linked to anywhere on the site. The most common reason ... XML sitemap but not linked to on the site. So, should they have internal links to them on the site?? Or should they just be removed from the XML sitemap?? Something to check.
#29 My favourite tool for checking these is Sitebulb Visualised really well and easy to get to the root of the problem. This example here was an extreme example of orphaned pages being an issue. [Avis before – Orphaned]
#31 Probably all heard of the Rule of 3 clicks… No necessarily a hard and fast rule. May be reasons why pages would be deeper for good reason. But as general rule, it’s good to keep important pages within 3 clicks.
#32 Again we can check with Sitebulb Just through their URL explorer
#33 Can also check with Screaming Frog
#34 And Twylu Note: Twylu - Very much and internal linking focused tool... so only looks at crawl depth within content, not in header and footer So it’s a bit different to a general audit and is quite specific to internal linking.
#36 Obviously a really important element. Often different views about anchor text... Some say - keep it consistent. Some say always vary it. I’ve actually seen both methods work well... but I like to go mostly for consistency and then add in some variations… especially based on opportunities and low hanging fruit (chat more about later)
#37 Sitebulb
#38 Frog
#39 Twylu
#40 When placing anchors... Think about First Click rule For those who don’t know, this is based on testing that a number of people have done… …where they found that Google only take into account the first anchor used when a page is linked to multiple times… so something else to be aware of
#42 This is an example from Crunch... Back to our first click rule… Does Google only look at that main nav link anchor and ignore the contextual one? … I don’t think so. A few years ago, our friend John from Google... confirmed that Google evaluates links in the main content vs footer differently. So what I would say about this is…
#43 Don’t worry about it If something is important and deserves to be in the main nav, put it there. If you’re optimising your internal links contextually, just do it as if the main nav link wasn’t there And don’t overthink it.
#44 Great example from Emily Potter @ Search Pilot She asked this on Twitter. Internal Linking test... Linking from top level cats to lower level cats Had 2 groups of pages... Pages links are placed on, and the pages being linked to. And they wanted to test the impact on the LINKING pages as well as the pages being LINKED TO
#45 And they wanted to test these internal links DESPITE THEM ALREADY BEING IN THE MAIN NAV And that’s why I wanted to show this example... Good example of how main nav and content links are treated differently
#48 25% uplift to organic traffic across level two and level three category pages But what was interesting was… It wasn't just the sub-categories contributing to uplift It was ALSO the linking pages
#50 No hard and fast rules or set limits but make it natural for users Make it useful Don’t cram 100 links into a 1000 word post just to add more internal links. More likely to overwhelm users.
#51 …And again, you can check this on Sitebulb…
#52 Screaming Frog
#53 And Twylu
#55 Speaking of Anlomalies... Shout out to Kevin Indig for this one. He's spoken about this before And I think he refers to these as ‘Outliers’ But it’s basically UNUSUAL or perhaps UNOPTIMAL use of incoming and outgoing links High Incoming, Low Outgoing Low Incoming, High Outgoing
#56 You can check these by exporting crawl data And putting in Excel or Sheets. and then filtering the incoming and outgoing links. If you do this manually, you will have to gauge where to set those filters by looking at the highs, lows and averages. Then make a call on what you feel is too low, or too high, for either of those columns. This one is an example of High Incoming, Low Outgoing
#57 And this is an example of Low Incoming
#58 And this is something that has been built into Twylu and it’s all been worked out for you Which ever tool or method you use... It’s then a case of going through and seeing if this is a genuine concern or not. So, for example, why do these pages have a lot of outgoing links but only 1 incoming link? Is that ok? Should they be linked to more?
#60 Passing Power or Link Equity or PageRank This is the idea of finding pages with strong backlink profiles And then passing some of that power on via internal links.
#61 Ahrefs (or Majestic)
#62 Can also find these in Twylu It’s then a case of sifting through the URLs to look for suitable, relevant pages. And RELAVANCE IS KEY HERE. Don’t be linking from irrelevant pages just because they’re strong… because you won't see the same benefits.
#64 And a few key things to think about here… We want to think about the quantity and quality of the links we need… And well as relevance (remember, really important)
#65 But first… it’s a good idea to get your house in order So, if you haven’t already… Get an audit done… sort site out Sort any dup content Fix broken links Sort int redirects Look for unnecessary overuse (or even incorrect use) of canonicals Look for orphaned pages And so on We don’t want these things skewing our work when looking for new opportunities. Sorting will put you in much better place.
#66 We want to look for RELEVANT opportunities So the first thing we can try is a search using site: operator Sure everyone knows this but site: …
#67 Here’s an example. Now, a word of warning here… this isn’t perfect…
#68 Page 10 Labrador only mentioned in main nav
#69 I can try to can around this using the intext: operator But again, I’m seeing the same results. And in that 3rd result for example…
#70 I’m only seeing Labrador in the main nav. So it’s not perfect but it is a good way to start if you want to find some quick internal linking opportunities.
#71 Now, when using site: command we also need to think about… What terms to use? What anchor variations to use for links? This is where Google Search Console comes in
#73 You can then see the search terms driving that page clicks. These could be anchor text opportunities. Tip here is to… Look for low hanging fruit using a filter on positions. You could potentially help those rankings by using those as anchors.
#74 Now, this has all been built it into this page on Twylu. So for example, if we click View Opportunities in the bottom right there, Twylu will take the top Search Console terms and look for them around the rest of the site. If it find mentions but those pages aren’t already linking to this page, then it’ll be listed as an opportunity. And you can also add manual terms in the top right there. So clicking View Opportunities in this example give … these opportunities
#75 And we can see ‘Mugs’ is mentioned on 30 pages that don’t link to the Mugs page. And if we click into that…
#76 We can now see the contextual relevance around those opportunities. And that first one should clearly be linking to this page… So that can then be added as a task.
#77 To give you some food for thought, let’s look at some examples of internal linking in practice.
#78 Wayfair Making use of related searches at the bottom of the page.
#79 Argos – Sofa beds
#80 Argos – Sofa beds
#81 Argos
#82 Argos
#87 Amazon
#88 And then we have some examples from news publications BBC
#108 Links to relevant articles down the side there
#111 ALWAYS RELEVANT
#112 Close with some reminders and tips
#113 And fix them obviously
#114 Especially for important pages.
#115 And look for opportunities to improve or vary these.
#116 And don’t just rely on your main nav for internal linking
#118 But make sure they’re relevant!!!
#119 I’m going to finish off with a big tip here! - every time you’re adding new content… Look for internal pages to link TO And also look for old content to link FROM
#121 Thank you… Feel free to follow me on Twitter (my DMs are open). I’m also on Instagram And my email is there too, I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. Thanks.

The Quickest Win in SEO – How to do Internal Linking the Right Way

The Quickest Win in SEO – How to do Internal Linking the Right Way

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