There are so many different SEO tools available to marketing professionals and business owners, it can start to become a bit overwhelming about what to use and when. The whole goal of SEO tools is to optimize your search engine results, get more click throughs, and obtain more customers. This is only possible if you’re using the tools correctly.

Internal linking has been an important SEO tool for quite some time now. If this isn’t a practice you are currently using, you’re going to want to read on so that you can learn just how important and how big of an impact it can have.

Understanding Search Rankings

In order to get a scoop of just how important internal linking is, it’s important to first understand how the search engines work. When a search engine ranks its results, it does so by page, not based on the website as a whole. Typically, the home page of a website is what will rank the highest and therefore get the most amount of traffic.

Getting people to that home page is only half the battle, however. Businesses obviously want the customers to stay and browse the rest of the site. This is where internal linking comes into play.

Where to Find Internal Linking

One of the most important places you’ll find internal linking is on the home page of a website. This doesn’t mean you need to go into overkill mode and link every single page on your website back to the home page, it just means you should include some internal linking. When used correctly, these internal links can provide the exposure that normally happens with external links.

Another useful place to use internal links is in your company blog. This is an excellent opportunity to link to content pages on your website that the visitor may not be aware of. The blog has already drawn them in, so why not take advantage of it.

Show Some Restraint

As stated even though these internal links are important and should be used, it’s important you show some restraint. Adding multiple internal links of every page will just be counter-productive. Above anything else you want the page to be informative and user-friendly. Stuffing it with internal links is going to affect it in a negative way.

Internal linking should be looked at as a way to keep the flow going, keep driving the traffic forward, and hopefully close a sale. It needs to be done in a way that makes sense, doesn’t come off as keyword stuffing, and feels very organic to visitors.

Another advantage to using internal linking, is that it can help to increase page authority, something many websites struggle with.

Time to Get On-board

If you haven’t yet ventured into the territory of internal linking, now is the time to get on-board. When used in the right way, and placed in the correct spots, internal linking can offer all kinds of benefits making it very important to SEO practices.