Four Types of Website Links
Four types of website links significantly contribute to an effective SEO campaign. Quality links are far more critical than quantity links, so spending time and consideration is essential in creating your link architecture. The architecture itself is vital, as the way that links are built into a site guides users in their customer journey from general awareness to conversion. In the same way, the link architecture guides search engines through your site, teaching the engines how your pages and topics are related. This assures the engines that your website is intuitive and logical and that customers recommended to your site by the engines will have a positive experience.
Internal Linking: Links to other relevant pages within your website.
External Linking: Links to authoritative external sources when relevant.
Site Links: Links to specific pages that are secondary to the main link in your SEM ads.
Backlinks: Links from external sites to yours.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from another website to a page on your website. They play a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO) as they signal to search engines that others vouch for your content. How they work:
Importance in SEO: Backlinks are a major factor used by search engines to determine the quality and relevance of a page. A page with many backlinks tends to rank high on all search engines. This is because backlinks are seen as a form of 'vote' for the quality of the content from the linking site, with a portion of each origin page’s authority being transferred to the target page.
Types of Backlinks:
Dofollow: These links pass on authority, contributing to the page's authority and impacting its ranking in search results.
Nofollow: These links do not pass on authority. They are used when linking to an unverified source or in sponsored content where the link is not an organic endorsement.
Quality Over Quantity: The value of a backlink depends on the linking site's authority. Links from high-authority, reputable sites are more valuable than those from low-authority or spammy sites. Quality backlinks can significantly improve your site's ranking and visibility.
Natural Link Building: This involves creating high-quality content valuable to your audience, encouraging organic linking. It's considered the best practice in SEO as opposed to artificial link building, which can be penalized by search engines.
Anchor Text: The clickable text in a hyperlink (anchor text) is also important in SEO. Relevant and keyword-rich anchor text can boost the rank of the linked-to site for those keywords. However, over-optimization of anchor text can appear manipulative and result in penalties. Diversity is best.
Link Diversity: Having backlinks from various domains, including different types of websites, geographical locations, and sources, can enhance your site's link profile's natural appearance and effectiveness.
Backlink Audits: Regularly auditing your backlink profile is important to identify and disavow toxic or spammy links that might harm your site’s ranking.
Building Backlinks: You can acquire backlinks through various methods like guest blogging, collaborating with influencers, creating shareable infographics, and participating in relevant forums or communities.
In summary, backlinks are a fundamental component of SEO strategy. A well-considered approach to earning high-quality backlinks can significantly improve your website's search engine rankings and overall online visibility.
Site Links
Site links are a feature in search engine results pages (SERPs). In a SERP, several internal links are displayed underneath the main result. These can be manually designated by a user or automatically generated by search engines to help users find other content on a website that may provide an alternative response to the search query.
Benefits for SEO and User Experience:
Enhanced Visibility: Site links make a search result more prominent in SERPs, occupying more screen space and drawing more attention.
Improved Click-Through Rate (CTR): Due to their prominent display, site links can lead to a higher CTR, driving more traffic to your website.
Better User Experience: Site links facilitate quicker navigation to relevant website sections, enhancing user experience.
Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to building a link from one page to another within the same website. Internal linking helps establish site architecture, distributes page authority, and improves user experience. Therefore, a strategic approach to internal linking can significantly impact a website's SEO authority and overall performance in search results. Here's a more detailed look:
Site Architecture and Navigation:
Internal linking helps define the architecture of a website. By linking related pages, you create a hierarchical structure that helps search engines understand the relationship between different content on your site.
A well-structured website with straightforward navigation helps users and search engines find information efficiently. This process naturally guides users from information gathering to conversion and search engines from less important pages to the most important pages.
Distribution of Page Authority (Link Equity):
When one page links to another within the same site, it passes a portion of its authority to the linked page. This improves the ranking potential of the linked page. Having several landing pages point to a single conversion page will increase the conversion page’s authority across a wide field of related materials.
Conversely, highly authoritative pages can distribute this authority to other pages through internal links, cumulatively increasing authority on all pages. However, care must be taken when creating these links, as more critical (conversion) pages need to stockpile authority and not distribute it to too many supporting pages. In other words, it is good practice to have multiple pages linked to your conversion page without having the conversion page linked back to too many. The conversion page should link to a few good supporting pages so that the user experience isn’t negatively impacted, but fewer is better.
Enhancing User Experience:
Internal links allow users to navigate your website, increasing engagement, reducing bounce rates, and building rapport between the user and your brand. You will never reach your sales potential without building trust in your brand.
They guide users to relevant and related content, improving the overall user experience. Too many links will overwhelm and confuse the reader, so quality links are better than quantity links.
Boosting Page Rankings:
Internal links can boost the rankings of individual pages for specific keywords, especially if relevant anchor text is used.
Search engines use internal links to discover new content on your site. More links to a page can increase its crawl frequency. This goes back to what was mentioned above: it is good practice to have multiple pages linked to your conversion pages without having the conversion pages linked back to too many.
Anchor Text Optimization:
The clickable text in an internal link (anchor text) should be relevant to the linked page. Using descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text helps search engines understand the context and content of the linked page.
However, over-optimizing anchor text should be avoided as it can appear manipulative to search engines. SEO is about optimizing your site for search engines, but search engines evaluate your site on its usefulness to the engine’s users. Thus, content must be accessible and natural for the user but crafted so that search engines still get the point.
Content Silos and Clustering:
Grouping related content into clusters and linking these pages together helps establish topical authority in a particular subject area. This approach, known as content siloing or topic clustering, can significantly enhance a site's authority on specific subjects and performance on specific keywords.
Reducing Link Depth:
Important pages should be reachable from the homepage with as few clicks as possible. Internal linking can reduce the link depth of crucial pages, making them more accessible to users and search engines.
External Linking
External linking is a somewhat controversial topic as it can quickly harm your SEO and be tricky to do effectively. However, when done strategically, you can greatly improve your SEO. Further, in some cases, external linking might be absolutely essential depending on the content type on your site.
For example, if you are writing scientific content, you must cite sources and link to different research papers. If you only cite the source but don’t provide a direct link, you give a negative user experience for someone attempting to research your content further, and a negative user experience results in negative SEO.
There are many circumstances where you would not want to create an external link. Remember, links give some of the page’s authority to the linked page, so making too many external links dilutes authority on your page and website. Also, if you link to low-authority pages, search engines will see that as you providing poor content to users. Even if the content is excellent, linking to websites with low authority on a subject (e.g., a blog or social media post) results in your link being considered low-quality, negatively impacting your SEO.
In summary, external links should be used to improve user experience by providing the user with the information they would logically be looking for, boosting the value of your content. Just don’t overdo it, and be conscientious about the quality of the sites you build links to.