Internal Linking

[Paul78]

Hi Everyone,

Should i be careful of how many internal links I have on one page? For example if i have a page that contains 700 words, can i have 5, 10, 15 internal links linking to other pages on my website? Is there a ratio for best practice.

I know that internal linking is important for spiders to crawl your website but at the same time dont make it look spammy.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks for any help.

[RyanKent]

Use whatever amount of internal links comes naturally. The purpose of internal links are to allow users who desire more information the ability to quickly find it.

If I write a statement "Vitamin A, Iron and Zinc are all essential nutrients....." then the three terms "Vitamin A", "Iron" and "Zinc" can all be anchor text links to internal pages which discuss these topics in greater detail. There is no rule of thumb such as "don't use more then 5 internal links per 100 words". The number would depend upon what content your site has available.

Take a look at Wikipedia which extensively uses internal links and ranks very well.

With respect to spam, I have never found natural internal links to look spammy. It's when you stretch to using text such as "the best vitamin in the world" as anchor text repeatedly that things can appear unnatural. You can certainly use that type of linking a few times in an article but I would suggest not overdoing it.

[smstv]

Hello;

If the links are relevant, and have structure, and reasons for being there, and linking to relevant information, I dont think it would hurt your ranking, so yes, I would be very careful, and yea, for the most part, with out seeing your site, the way it sounds, like a "Link farm" and search engines are over looking any link farms.. Hope this helps.

That is just my opinion.

[Paul78]

Hi Ryan,

Yes, all these are natural, all for the benefit is for the user, not try to think to much on the SEO side of things, well maybe a little

Thanks for your quick response.

[AlanMosley]

bing actualy encourges internal linking
Provide a site structure with strong functionality, which helps encourage
link building. Linking to both trusted outside sources and internal content
shows a search engine you care about users getting the best data around their
query. In addition, HTML sitemaps ensure a good user experience and help search
engines discover all your pages and content.
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/default.aspx?PageIndex=8

[Paul78]

On another note, i notice that Wiki, BBC and other do not user underlines by default in there internal links, but use just a different colour of text, only when the user hovers over the text it underlines. Do you know of any case studies done on this? what have you guys used in the past? experiences etc

My personal feeling is lets say naturally there are quite a few links, underlines i think make it quite difficult to read.

Kind Regards

[AlanMosley]

I see SEO like playing golf after a lesson, you dont want to go all stiff and un-natural, you need to swing natrualy with what you have learnt in the back of your mind.

[AlanMosley]

I agree, many sites do not underline, I personly have not seen any evidecne to cause concern.

[RyanKent]

I am not aware of any case studies, but I would share I do not use underlines on links in content. I like the method used here at SEOmoz. Notice in Alan's reply when he shared a link it appears in blue. That is the style I prefer.

[Paul78]

Yes, just noticed this also. I'm sure the guys who work on Wiki & the likes of the BBC, The Guardian are not just using this method for the sake of it, very interesting indeed. Although noticed NYTimes user underlines