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Internal Links — Overlooked, Powerful SEO Tip

A lot of people use linkbuilding as a major part of their search engine optimization strategy. They concentrate on getting links from other websites to point to their pages.

Did you know that internal links– links on the same website pointing to other pages on that website– can boost a page in search engine results? I haven’t found a study showing exactly how much of a boost they provide, but I am persuaded by those who have done their homework, done controlled studies, and observed the outcome to be convinced that internal links — links from page A to page B on the same site —  can boost page B’s position in search engine results.

Skim these and see if you’re convinced:

On his SEO-Theory blog, Michael Martinez points out the obvious, yet I’ve never seen anyone else mention it: there is no research anywhere suggesting that search engines treat external links as more important than internal links in deciding a page’s “relevance”!

SEOmoz reports a study of internal links suggesting the anchor text of internal links may not be that important (at least to Google). Nevertheless, they wouldn’t be making the study if they didn’t think internal links were a factor in search engine rankings. If their tests had proved otherwise, they’d certainly have mentioned it!

That article also reports that excessive internal linkage may trip a Google penalty. I’m guessing this is why Squidoo masked Squidoo Tags pages from search engines in its robots.txt file, to avoid that penalty.

But I can’t see how you’d trip that penalty with a lensroll of relevant lenses, a Featured Lenses module, or spiffy-cool Table of Contents connecting up all your lenses in the same niche. Instead, internal connections between related lenses shoud boost their search rankings.

The bottom line:

MAKE SURE YOUR LENSES ON THE SAME NICHE LINK TO EACH OTHER!

Remember, when looking for ways to build links, that internal links count!

The Discovery Tool’s links back and forth between pages on Squidoo count!

Lensroll links to your lens count!

Links from group pages to your lens count!

Use them!

One Comment

  1. Yup – been saying this to Lensmasters for a while now.

    Keep the Discovery Tool turn ON, as with the right tags this can get you 100 or so internal links from related lenses, and having a lens featured on a group’s HQ page can really help too.

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