Internal Linking For SEO: Why It Is Important For Your eLearning Website
Internal linking for SEO is essential for eLearning websites because it can help your site grow significantly. All you have to do is be smart about it. As you keep adding content to your eLearning website or blog, it gets harder to remember what topics you've published. So, you need to keep track of your published content and create contextual links that will help improve your website navigation and SEO results.
Thankfully for us, WordPress and Yoast SEO have solved the issue by suggesting internal linking content and taking our platform to new heights. Also, tools like Ahrefs and SemRush have played a crucial role in improving our internal linking strategy. Don't you want to do the same for your business?
Internal linking is critical if you want to build up your site's page views and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Worry not, because I'm going to share all the best practices I know of! Sometimes, finding the best content links between your pieces can be tricky. Fortunately, this article will analyze everything about internal linking for SEO. Plus, we'll explore how you can easily find posts related to other content on your eLearning website.
Are you ready to improve your internal linking structure and help easily guide readers throughout your site?
Let's get to it!
What Are Internal Links?
To answer your question on what internal linking is, I need to mention the definition first. We consider an internal link a link that points to another page on the same website. So, internal links are all the hyperlinks your website uses to send users to the same domain as the domain on which the link exists. The optimal format to use when implementing internal linking is to leverage descriptive keywords in your anchor texts. That way, you create relevance between the topic or keywords of the source page you're trying to target.
Internal links are essential for SEO for many reasons. First off, when you use internal links, you allow users to navigate your eLearning website better. Consequently, you help your website structure by establishing an information hierarchy. Best of all, internal linking allows spreading link equity. Meaning you spread the ranking power around your website.
Say, for example, that on our website we'd like to send all the relevant traffic for the keyword "best LMS" to our main Top List page. Then, we'd include a hyperlink in our content that links to that list, e.g., "Are you looking for the ideal tool to deliver exceptional training? Check out our top list featuring the best LMS tools in the market."
You get where I'm going with this. The more internal links we create that send to this specific page, the more significant the page will become regarding SEO.
Obviously, there are many differences when you're thinking of internal links vs. external links.
If you want to learn more about what types of links you can use, feel free to read my other articles on the topic.
Why Are Links Important To Google?
Well, to make it simple, internal links are essential to Google because they can help the search engine understand and rank your website better.
That's why internal linking is one of my favorite SEO best practices. You see, creating internal links to the pages that matter the most to your website is vital if you want to establish site architecture. Also, that way, you'll be able to spread link equity (URLs are equally important when creating your content). For this reason, SEO-friendly site architecture is a must-have strategy when dealing with internal links.
Why hide or bury your main link navigation when you can boost it instead? Don't make the same mistake that many sites make. You have to ensure that search engines can access your website's major pages. That way, you won't hinder the spiders' ability to get pages listed in the search engines' keyword-based indices.
When talking about internal linking structure, you have to create landing pages that spiders can crawl. The same goes for your human visitors. Sure, smart marketing is key to great content and good keyword targeting. But all the above make no difference if the spiders can't reach your pages in the first place.
When you give search engines links to follow along with descriptive anchor texts, you indicate which pages of your website are important. Not to mention you help the spiders understand what they are about. Also, internal links are good for improving visitor engagement along with the whole User Experience.
So, make it easy for spiders and visitors to navigate your eLearning website from one page to the next.
Benefits Of Internal Linking And SEO For Your eLearning Website
One might ask, "Does internal linking help SEO?" The simple answer is...it depends.
For me, internal linking offers many SEO benefits for User Experience. And that's the best of it all. By implementing an intelligent link structure, your website visitors will never get lost when browsing through long articles and have the chance to view more pages on your website. The proper internal links will take users where they need to go. So, choosing relevant pages is critical to make them keep browsing within other sections of your website.
Here are some of the main benefits of having internal links.
1. Internal Linking Helps In Crawling And Indexing
It's all about making Googlebots recreate a visitor's thinking process. Thus, creating an effective internal architecture helps Googlebots understand which pages are more important. As a result, they give a boost to your valuable pages and assist you in ranking higher. Basically, internal linking for SEO improves navigation for search engines and users. The use of internal links allows users and crawlers to navigate around your website easily. That's how search engines find your content.
2. Leads Users To Relevant Information And Drives Traffic To Your Pages
Having internal links makes it easier for your eLearning website visitors to find content relevant to what they are searching for. Plus, it's beneficial for users who are researching possible eLearning products or services. Your content and landing pages help them find solutions and answers based on their search queries. That's great, especially before buyers make a purchase decision. For example, let's say that a visitor is looking for the best blended learning LMS. If your LMS is ideal for blending learning, he or she might purchase your LMS from your website.
But what about prospects that haven't made their decision yet? By crafting blog posts that support your eLearning product, you can persuade him to buy. Content marketing influences purchase decisions and decision-makers. That's why internal linking is crucial, because you can drive visitors from one page to the next to make your case about your unique selling point and why they need your solution. So, basically, internal linking passes link juice from one page to the next. When this happens, you get the opportunity to increase your SEO rankings and manage to get more organic traffic from SERPs.
3. Decreases Bounce Rates And Enhances User Experience
The placement of internal links can also improve UX for visitors. Using the right links helps them access the information they need faster. Apart from helping website visitors to find information, internal links have the power to decrease your bounce rate because users get interested in other internal links you have incorporated into your content. As a result, your overall bounce rate decreases. Simultaneously, enhancing UX enhances PageRank. Finally, improving the User Experience and the time on site can actually help you optimize conversion rates.
Link Value
When talking about the SEO value of a link, you need to consider several factors. For example, if the link is nofollow or dofollow, or the number of outgoing links on a specific page. Also, the page on your website that it links to is important, as is the text within the link and the diversity of the sources of links. Let's not forget the relevance of the linking page and so forth. Also, there are other factors that might count, like if the link is fresh or if it is within the body copy or a sidebar or footer. Links within the editorial are always better. In addition, links on higher pages higher up in the URL structure hierarchy are better.
One question I hear often is: how many internal links are considered too many? Well, there's no real definitive answer as to how many internal links on a page are too many. From what I know, Google has indicated that their spiders have no problem crawling hundreds of links per page. Of course, lots of links on a webpage aren't always good, especially for User Experience. So, limiting the number of links you use per page can indeed provide additional SEO benefits to your website.
Let's say that a reasonable number is typically around 100 or less per page. If we're looking for an optimum number of links, I'd say it should be around 20. In addition, a good rule of thumb is to only link to essential pages. And those pages should be related to the particular webpage and the exact matched anchor text.
Setting Up An Internal Linking Strategy
Unfortunately, internal linking is one of the most neglected link building tactics in SEO marketing. I've seen the results firsthand, so take my word for it: don't underestimate the impact of developing an optimized internal linking strategy. Internal links pass authority between pages on your site, and that ultimately improves rankings. So, first off, you have to identify your most important pages.
Please do an internal links check to find your eLearning website's existing internal links. New sites will also have some degree of internal linking already in place, even if it lacks strategic thinking. So, before making key decisions on your new internal linking strategy, you need to know where you stand. By auditing your internal linking status, you'll have plenty of insights to start planning a full strategy from scratch.
Your internal links audit will show you what kind of issues exist and how you can resolve them with internal linking. Your internal linking strategy will help you build on and ultimately manage to improve your website.
Issues you might find after conducting a technical SEO audit:
- Broken internal links
- Links couldn't be crawled
- Too much on-page internal linking
- Nofollow attributes in outgoing internal links
- Orphaned sitemap pages
- Page crawl depth takes many clicks
- Pages with only one internal link
- Permanent redirects
- HTTPS pages leading to HTTP pages
After the audit, step number one is to identify your website's hub pages. Then, consider mapping out topic clusters for your internal linking project. Don't just focus on the associated keywords. Hub pages usually target broad keywords with high search volumes. However, it's good to sometimes focus your anchor texts on specific long-tail keywords as well, even though they receive fewer monthly searches. The clusters will help your content add depth to the topic.
How To Find Internal Links
Another question I keep getting is: how do you find internal linking opportunities? Well, the best way to find internal linking opportunities is to find pages on your site that rank for related eLearning topics. Then you can make sure to add links with descriptive anchor texts.
If you want to improve Search Engine Optimization, optimizing internal links is key. And when your website is large, the more that optimization will help Google and other search engines identify important pages.
In case you have an eCommerce website, you'll most likely be dealing with category pages, product pages, and duplicates of those pages. So, you need to make sure that you craft the Googlebot paths towards your most important pages—the profitable ones. As a best practice, search optimizers use canonical tags, robots.txt, and nofollows. These are considered mostly detours. Hence, using direct links is much better.
For example, if I were looking for a corporate training category page to rank better, I would value internal links from copy-rich pages that are related to X corporate training category.
If you're looking for an automated solution, there are many internal link building services and tools you can leverage. You might like to try out these solutions:
- Yoast SEO
- Semrush (Site Audit - Internal Linking Report)
- Ahrefs (Link Opportunities)
- Link Whisper
- Internal Link Juicer Pro
- Internal Links Manager
For more tips on best practices and tips, you can always contact our SEO experts and content marketing specialists.
They can help you improve your internal linking strategy and fix any broken links you might have missed.
Key Takeaway
Internal linking is a must-have ingredient of any solid SEO strategy. When done right, adding internal links can help you rank higher in the SERPs. At the same time, it also enhances the User Experience on your eLearning website.
Any strong website design has a well-thought-out structure. And that goes for the way internal links are used for passing authority from one page to the next.
The ultimate goal of including internal links in your content should be to ensure you're getting the most out of your content. Don't forget to optimize anchor tags, but never overdo it. An SEO audit can certainly help you identify issues and improve your strategy.
The most important thing to remember is that providing users with more information about a topic they're interested in is key. That's how you'll make the most out of your content and SEO efforts.
So, after reading this article, what do you think? Do internal links help SEO?
Make sure to leave your comments below so that we can clear out any doubts you might have.
