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By Patrick Gavin, Inc.
While many web professionals understand the importance of building
up a strong base of inbound links, many miss the importance of a
good internal link structure.
As search engines have improved their ranking algorithms, they
have gained a better understanding of how people link to pages.
One of the factors that search engines have been analyzing and
factoring into their ranking algorithms is the anchor text - that
is, the text used between the anchor tags.
<a href=“http://www.patrickgavin.com”>The text
here is the anchor text.</a>
Search engine have come to understand that the anchor text often
more indicative of a page’s content than the meta data of
the page itself. So much so, in fact, that some pages are ranked
in in the top ten for highly competitive keywords simply because
many other pages link to that page using the keyword as the anchor
text of the link.
Google is especially susceptible to anchor text. In fact, it is
well known that you can pretty much any given page ranked for a
keyword simply by using that keyword as the anchor text of your
links to that page. It is called “Google bombing”, and
a well known instance of it involved a couple dozen bloggers linking
to the official George W. Bush page using the anchor text “miserable
failure”.
After a couple weeks, low and behold, the page was ranked #1 for
the search “miserable failure”, even though those words
did not appear anywhere on the page itself.
Once you understand the weight accorded to anchor text, you may
choose to take a second look at how you link to your own pages.
For instance, instead of linking to a page using the anchor text
“Specs”, why not link using your keywords in the anchor
text: “Widget Specs”.
Another consideration of internal linking in conserving or distributing
link weight.
Most websites have the majority of inbound links directed at their
index page. So take a look at your index page. Are all your most
important pages linked to from your index page? Or are your most
important pages a couple clicks away?
Follow this simple formula:
The more important the page, the more occurrences of links to that
page within the site. The less important the page, the less frequent
the number of links.
Some pages, such as Terms Of Service or Acceptable Use Policy pages,
need not have a link from each page. And links to external sites
should be kept at a minimum.
In Summary
When link building, look first at your own pages. It is often the
case that top ranking for moderately competitive keywords or minimally
competitive keywords can be achieved simply by optimizing your internal
linkage.
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