Your site needs to have an internal linking strategy that is consistent with the bigger picture SEO plan of the site.
Your site is consisted of different pages, these pages can be grouped together as pillar pages or focus pages as well as the secondary pages.
This is a simple grouping for a site that doesn’t have tons of content.
Pillar Pages vs. Secondary Pages
The Pillar or Focus pages are the ones that should appear higher on Google search results, these are the pages that if rank high can generate conversions and turn visitors into clients.
Example of pillar pages are:
- Service pages
- Product pages
- Case study pages or testimonials
- Any other bottom of the funnel pages
On the other hand, secondary pages are the ones that are less important in terms of converting visitors to actual clients but still are necessary for the users. Here are some example of secondary pages:
- Blog Posts
- FAQ Pages
- About Us
- Team Pages
- Policy Pages
- Educational Resources
- Documentations
Topic Clusters: A Logical Way to Organize Content
Another way of grouping a website’s content is by the topics. This is more relevant to the sites that have a lot of pages.
You can have different clusters of topics that link to each other in each cluster and then each cluster is itself linked to another neighbouring cluster. So each cluster has its own links within the cluster and the cluster themselves are linked to one another and your other important pages.
If you have tons of very powerful content but there is no logical interlinking between them you are putting money on the table. This means that you could have done much better in search engines by just creating a natural flow of internal links that connect these content to one another in a way that makes sense for both user and search engines.
So when it comes to the internal linking strategy, you need to first think of your site as group of related pages or clusters. Each cluster has address one topic from different point of views and each content in that cluster should be linking to the immediate next relevant content that has the most intent proximity with it.
So in short the best internal linking strategy mostly evolve around grouping your website pages into smaller clusters and then linking content inside each cluster to one another and linking clusters to one another and to your pillar, focus pages and homepage.
Steps to Create a Winning Internal Linking Strategy
Take these steps to come up with a internal linking strategy that will rock if done right:
1- Identify Your Core Topics:
First find all the topics that your site should discuss or already discuss. If you have topics that are not directly related to your service offering eliminate them.
2- Map Pages to Each Topic Cluster
Then find the pages that go under each relevant topic, try to list them from the most important pages to the least important ones. When looking at the importance of these pages, consider these factors:
- Which of these pages are already doing good on Google or receiving lots of traffic from other sources?
- Which of these pages address the multi layer intent that a user might have and is closer to the bottom of the funnel?
- Which of these pages convert better? For which you need to look at your historical data form GA4 or Google Ads.
- Which of these pages have the best link profile from external sources?
- Any other criteria that is important for your unique case.
Eliminate any thin content, old content or content that won’t go under any of the clusters you came up with earlier.
3- Perform Keyword Research for Internal Links
Then do a keyword research of each topic find relevant keywords that you can use to interconnect the pages that go under each cluster. For the keyword research you can use Allintitle’s free keyword research tool. You will use these keywords later on to link different pages under each cluster to one another.
4- Link Between Related Clusters
Now find the topic cluster that is most relevant to one two other clusters and try to find a way to create links between the clusters. One way to do this is with content that address a multi-topic question or serve as a multidisciplinary topic. Now create links between the clusters.
5- Optimize Links to Pillar Content
Identify your pillar content or focus pages, these are the pages that you want to rank high on Google and are the pages that have the most impact on your business in terms of revenue generation and conversion rate. Link to these focus pages from different clusters using relevant anchor text. Also don’t forget to link to the homage from different pages under different clusters.
6- Improve Site-wide Navigational Links (footer and header links)
The last step will be to enhance your website’s navigation and interconnection by improving your top navigation and footer links. You might need to link to each main topic cluster from these site-wide areas or to your pillar pages AKA focus pages.
When linking between pages try to use variations of keywords, don’t place two links to a the same destination from the same page. Don’t leave any orphan page or don’t excessively link to a page try to create a balanced interlinking structure.
The above steps are just an example of how you strategize your internal linking efforts and form an internal linking plan that is firstly operational, actionable and can have the most impact on your website’s rankings.
Each website might need to have a unique strategy for internal linking that might depend on the type of the site, the industry or vertical it is part of, their unique user intent, etc.
The best internal linking strategy always should be a balanced strategy that is not over-optimized, use anchor text right, use variation of anchor text to link between the pages and is best for both user and search engines and help improve the navigation of the site.
An internal linking tool like Twylu can help you find hidden internal link opportunities in the content of the pages you already have there and help you gain actionable insights to operationalize your internal linking strategy.
