Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?

[leggo]

I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it.

I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site).

In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance!

2KmX0

[Tymen]

Hi Leggo,

I would not go for a relaunch and post everything online at the same time again. This would seem very unnatural. Also I would get rid of the linking to the main articles. You could put the most important articles/ topics in a footer menu and get the same idea. If the content is unique and actually gives answers for those looking for information it is valuable. I also see you put new articles on so this adds to your credibility. What is your aim with the site?

Good luck regards, Tymen

[leggo]

Thanks for the tip Tymen. In response to when you say "post everything online at the same time again", I do not plan on taking anything offline and the site has remained live for years even though it was not being updated with new content. By relaunching we'll be focused on adding new content. To summarize, you're suggesting we get rid of the modules in the right tool bar that point to specific articles, correct? And we could just put key articles and topics in the footer?

The aim with the site is to provide features, news, and reviews on various bands/artists.

[dohertyjf]

Hi Leggo, thanks for the question!

Your current setup is definitely not optimal for SEO, as you are discovering. There are a few things that you can do to help yourself out here. First, there are three good resources here on Moz that you should check out (the last 2 done by me in 2012, but still very relevant):

1. https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
2. https://moz.com/blog/internal-linking-strategies-for-2012-and-beyond
3. https://moz.com/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday

On to your specific questions.

You ask how to set up your internal linking. Your current setup of linking to just 20 pages internally is definitely not helping you out because you are effectively just telling Google about those 20 articles and not the longtail of articles that you have. XML sitemaps are for discovery purposes for Google, not ranking. An HTML sitemap is a must for you if you have a lot of content and can also help with discoverability and a bit with rankings as well, but it's definitely not all you need to do.

If your content is structured well (in categories that make sense, tagged, etc), then you can set up a system (all depends on your CMS how this is configured) that links similar articles with other similar articles. Some sites have done smart things with linking to specific articles that have more potential search volume, and deprioritizing the number of internal links to articles that don't have much potential.

In the latter case, eventually you should audit if you should remove those lower volume or quality pages to help your site overall. You say that it is indeed the case that you have these pages. I would at first not put them in the sitemap. Then, decide if you want to a) update them to make them quality or b) remove them. That's an internal decision based off of current available resources (time, people) and opportunity. I've done both in the past (updated or removed) and both can definitely help. It just depends on your overall strategy for your site!

Good luck!