Internal Link Building

[WNL]

For a large part of our SEO we have been focusing on inbound links (mainly from guest posts and blogger reviews). But our rankings have dropped (though I understand there is a natural fluctuation in rankings quite often) this week and it occurred to me that we should be focusing more on internal link building as well. We, of course, link often to our home page and have related products on every page but we lack a lot of direct key word links in in our description. Would it behoove us to be on a specific product page--take for example owls and friends wall decals--and somewhere in the description add something like "our nursery wall decals are safe for....and have "nursery wall decals" be the direct link since that is a key term for us?

I just wanted to make sure that we are headed in the right direction before I spend a massive amount of time updating all these product pages.

Any input would be really helpful.

Thanks so much,

Elizabeth

[Aggie]

Elizabeth, think of internal links as walking a visitor to content you'd like them to read, or that you think they might find valuable as relevant to the content they're already on.

Links not only help the user experience, but they tell every audience which pieces of content you find valuable and relevant.

The anchor text you use should be intuitive and helpful for the reader.  Sometimes that means using the exact title of the page you'll be going to.  Other times it means developing the anchor text as if you are the reader i.e. why would I leave the page to visit this link?  Is it more helpful than the page I'm on?  Is it supportive research to support my story?

If you're an ecommerce site, it is helpful to link to related products within that category or collection or other products someone might need.

If you think of every page as a standalone page that someone entered from search, how would they know to get to related products?

I hope this helps!

Lisa

[DougRoberts]

I'd be cautious about adding unnecessary links for the sole purpose of getting some anchor text relevancy.

Do make sure that if you are naturally linking to another page/product that you use clear relevant anchor text that makes sense to your visitors in the context of the page that you're linking from.

Do consider the user experience, and the goals of the page you're creating the links on. You don't, for example, want superflous links drawing your visitors away from your conversion goals, adding confusion and uncertainty. Unlike your main navigation, in-line links can disorient visitors to your site. (What works for a wiki type site isn't necessarily a good idea for an e-commerce one!)

If you have a blog, or ever-green content that's been around for a while, attracted some links, been shared then do remember to go back to some of the popular content and update it, linking to the latest products/services/articles. It's easy to remember to link back to older articles, but updating your old content to link to the latest material can really help, especially if you're old pages are ranking well, attracting visitors and are still relevant.

Doug.

[justin-brock]

My daughters have those owls on their bedroom wall.

[WNL]

That is so awesome! Haha I love that.

[WNL]

Thank you Lisa! This is what I thought but gave me some new insight. Really appreciate it.

[Aggie]

Agree, Doug.  Links for link sake is not a good idea, but for an ecommerce site without a ton of navigation, links are a great way to cross-merchandise their products.

In fact, they might be wise to use a product recommendation engine to elevate and expose more products during the shopping experience.

[WNL]

We try to keep unnecessary links to a minimum. If any.

We do have recommended products at the bottom of each page, but they are images. I was just curious if it would behoove us to have more anchor text in our descriptions (if it was helpful and applicable of course).

Thanks guys.

[DougRoberts]

How "getable" and appealing are the images? Is it easy to tell what they are?

Have you optimised the ALT text and FIlename?

Adding a caption can help too - but try to customers in mind, keep them snappy and try to include the things that help them differentiate between the the relevant options.

Definitely something worth testing.