Whats the best practice for internal links?

Roman-Delcarmen

If for example, the key product was "funeral plans" what percentage of the internal anchor text links should be an exact match? there is no static rule about it, so your starting point will be your own Search Console Account and your GA Account

Unlike external links, where over-optimization of anchor text is manipulative and can lead to penalties, internal links should have optimized anchor text. Using keyword-rich anchor text is helpful to both search crawlers and users clicking the link.

My advice is to select all your target keyword and all the close variation and start to create internal links on this way

**Check your most relevant pages **

1. Pages that had high traffic and PA. You can find these in Google Analytics, Search Console and Ahrefs
2. Pages where the keyword already existed unlinked. You can use this query to find such pages: Site:[yoursite.com] “funeral plans”

In your case, searching for “funeral plans” will show you a number of mentions
After making a list of these pages add internal links by hand. (This is my personal option other people use tools, plugins or whatever) These new links from established posts showed Google that you thought of this page as “important.”

Will the prominence of those links eg higher up the page has an impact on the amount of juice flowing?

First and foremost, internal links are important because they help search engines better understand your site.

A large number of internal links pointing to a specific page signal that page is important and helps search engines determine which pages to return in their search results.

Sometimes a broader category page will rank above a specific product page for a query about that specific product — this is less than ideal.

For example, a company that sells different types of bats could see their general “Bats” category page ranking above their “Softball bats” page for the query [cheap softball bats]. Internally linking to the “Softball bats” page could help Google recognize it should be returning that page for the given query.

And do links in buttons count in the same way as on page anchor text eg "compare funeral plans"? It will help you to pass link juice to your page but it will not help Google to understand the content of that page (It will not help you to rank for your target keyword)

** I hope this info helps you to answer your question**

AshShep1

HI Roman

Thank you for your answer.

We also have site wide "Quick Links" boxes on most pages where we have a list of anchor text with links eg

Equity Release Calculator
Compare funeral plans
Affordable Health Insurance
Over 50 Life Insurance

These are in addition to on page text links.

So google will see hundreds of links coming in to these key pages all with the same anchor text - should we continue with this or remove them?

Regards

Ash

Roman-Delcarmen

I'm assuming that you are talking about a widget when you say "Quick Links Boxes" in the sidebar or in the footer or any other specific area. There's no need to remove them but you need to keep in mind that all those links will make those pages outstand over other pages.

So your main question is this. Do you want to make those pages your **10X content (Most relevant pages) **If the answer is positive keep the Link Box if not just remove it.

AshShep1

Yes its in the sidebar.

Just to clarify then, having say 300 links all with the same anchor text and most with an exact match to the main keyword/product is ok ?

Also if say i have an internal link in the main body of content for one of the pages linked that is also in the sidebar which will google take as the primary link eg sidebar link is "over 50 life insurance" and link in page content is "compare life insurance" both going to the same page?

Ash

Roman-Delcarmen

Just to clarify then, having to say 300 links all with the same anchor text and most with an exact match to the main keyword/product is ok?

I will assume that you want to rank your site for the keyword funeral plans
I'll explain exactly what I would do

But first, you need to be clear in some basic concepts

The structure of a website and your internal link is of great importance for its
chances to rank in search engines. For two main reasons:

1 A decent structure and internal linking make sure Google ‘understands’ your site.
2 A decent structure makes sure you do not compete with your own content.

Important terms and definitions that you have to keep in mind to understand what I'm doing

Keyword research (I will assume that you already did it and you know what is)
Long tail keywords in your case these are some examples

prepaid funeral plans - Volume 100 - Keyword Difficulty: 08
cost of prepaid funeral plans - Volume 50 - Keyword Difficulty: 07
low-cost funeral plans - Volume 40 - Keyword Difficulty: 04

Landing pages are the main pages through which visitors enter your
website.

In this case, I will assume you are a local business
so one of your landing pages will look like this

All depends on your site structure and your content

Cornerstone contents are the most important articles or pages on your website.

This is the content that exactly reflects your business. These articles
should be relatively high in your site structure. In most cases, the
homepage directly links to these pages or articles

In affiliate marketing, this content is called Money Pages
Definition: A piece of content that is monetized in some fashion, such as
promoting products as an affiliate, capturing leads to sell them to a
3rd party or heavy advertisement.

Here on Moz is called 10X content
https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday

What is cornerstone content?
https://yoast.com/what-is-cornerstone-content/

So instead on focus on anchor text or internal links or link counts
the first question and the most important that you need to answer is

What is your main content?
What is your business about?

So if you provide funeral plans on a specific location
all your business needs to be focused on that ( SEO, PPC, Social Media) all your internal links will be focused on those pages. You don't just start to build internal link just because you read an article about it. **I need to have a goal in mind **

Example

Title: Affordable Funeral Plans Miami - Title
URL: wwww.yourwebsite.com/funeral-plans/

So this what I would do on your case

**Define your cornerstone content (Your internal links will point to these) **
**Make a keyword research looking for all closed related term of your main keyword **
Building internal links to those pages using the keywords above (main+secondary)
Make almost perfect On-page optimization
Add Schemas to that page to add even more visibility
**Add Amp version of that page **
**Finally, build some back-links to those pages **

Hope this info helps you to answer your question

AshShep1

Thank you for your detailed answer, its much appreciated.

Our site is www.over50choices.co.uk is well established with a national presence.

We have 5 or 6 "cornerstone" products and until recently have been successful with most of them through natural search, we do v little PPC.

We have seen "funeral plans" and "over 50 life insurance" rankings drop from top half of page 1 to bottom/page 2 positions which of course impacts our earnings.

Our site has always been set up in the way that you suggest, so the reason for my questions are because we have been looking at ways to squeeze every last bit of juice we can and more recently have read about the importance of internal links, so was keen to understand whether the sidebar site wide links was not the most effective way to structure the site going forwards?

They have always been there but if google has changed the rules recently i was wondering whether this is what could be hurting us.

We have started a review of internal links for these products as we have so many and the early findings are that we could do with some tidying up but nothing major.

All of our other long tail keywords are still performing well, so its just the big keywords that generate a lot of our income that have dropped.

Does this info help shed any more light on why they may have dropped?

Thanks

Ash

Roman-Delcarmen

I made a quick audit of your website and will make some assumptions

This is your flagship page
https://www.over50choices.co.uk/funeral-planning/funeral-plans

As I see you already have a good backlink profile but suddenly you have been losing ranks these are some advice to you

check the spam score of all your backlinks (Here on Moz is called Spam Score on Semrush is Called Toxic Score)
build internal links (I will assume that you are working on that right now)
disavow all the useless links
build new backlinks

Also, I notice a Drop on ranks on October (Ahref rank) keeping in mind that you are in a competitive niche all the details are important

You need to figure out how to improve your user experience, making a quick test on PageSpeed there are several small tasks that you can perform to improve it (Enable the compression, Leverage, Browser Cache) By itself will not show a big impact but the summary of all of them can show a big impact. AMP can give you more visibility on mobile devices

Roman-Delcarmen

Site: https://www.over50choices.co.uk/ “funeral plans”
Checking on Google there are 1,430 results for that keyword on your site
So that is starting point easy and fast

Internal Links

Input URL: https://www.over50choices.co.uk/funeral-planning/funeral-plans
Total links: 124
External links: 19 - (15%) of Total links
Duplicate links: 45 - (36%) of Total links
Empty anchor: 0
No alt tag: 1
Nofollow count (Line-through): 1

According to the On-Page Grader Tool
https://analytics.moz.com/pro/research/page-grader

These are some basic points to improve

Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword Placement in Page Title
Optimal Use of Keywords in Header Tags
Includes a Rel Canonical Tag ----> This is very Important

AshShep1

Hi Roman

Thank you for your help.

Im looking at the speed issue as well.

None of our pages have the canonical tag on them - why is this so important?

Ash

Roman-Delcarmen

The rel=canonical element helps us determine which version of a URL is the original when multiple version of a URL returns the same content. This can happen when, for example, you append a tracking notation to a URL. Two discrete URLs then exist, yet both have identical content. By implementing a rel=canonical, you can tell us the original one, giving us a hint as to where we should place our trust. Do not use this element in place of a proper redirect when moving content.

Take for example the following URLs

Each URL is referring to the same page content for Legal Services, however, the URLs themselves are slightly different.

This can be an issue for search engines because the engine itself doesn’t necessarily know which page should be the source of truth, and it may just choose a canonical URL algorithmically for you.

In other words, if you have a web page accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content (ie. separate mobile and desktop versions), you should specify to a search engine which URL is authoritative (canonical) for that page.

In the Google Search Console, you can find the option to set URL parameters, once your website is verified. What this does is give you the ability to tell Google which parameters you would like to consider passive. What this means is that you can tell Google, “whenever you see this URL parameter, just treat it like it doesn’t exist”.

These are 2 good sources of what I'm talking about Google and Moz

AshShep1

That's really helpful

Many thanks for taking the time

Ash

Roman-Delcarmen

You are welcome

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