Does it pay to change link text internally?

[joemas99]

Most of my internal pages have their best links from within our site (of course we are trying to change that). Is it worth the effort to sculpt the link text to show varied text instead of most all showing the same link text? Or is that only important from external links?

[RyanPurkey]

Variable link text applies to your internal website pages whether from your own site or externally; however, you'll be best served by giving your most competitive terms and most important pages one relevant link from your home page. On internal pages you can link to those same pages with less competitive and semantically related keywords, but avoid overly linking to one page multiple times per page.  It's also useful for the links to be in context of the rest of your site. Halogen Software does a good job of this (http://www.halogensoftware.com/) Note how in their left-hand navigation they use a contextual link and then use a nofolllow for the "Find out more..." link to the same page.

I can't really speak to the worth applied in this effort.  That depends on your own ROI. But a carefully crafted site will pay long term dividends down the road, even more so as it gains external links with similar keywords.

[joemas99]

Now I'm confused. doesn't the do follow contextual links mess up the sculpting of the silo effect of only linking below you with do follow links, or does that not matter anymore?

[RyanPurkey]

It's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison.  Sculpting is applicable for large scale sites that are having difficulty keeping pages indexed.  If that's a problem you're facing you may have to do away with some contextual links in favor of passing as much link juice as possible through the entire network of your site.

On sites not facing indexation problems, contextual linking is another asset towards the enhancement of internal pages.

[joemas99]

Site is now 600-700 pages. Any indexing problems were caused by bad coding, so no.

As for sculpting, i was talking about keeping the do follow links down the same topical silo for ranking purposes for similar key words, not indexing. Does that change your answer?

[RyanPurkey]

Ah. Sculpting in the sense that I'm familiar with is more so a function purely of PR strength.  I think as long as you're not pushing the boundaries of contextual relevance and spam you'll be fine interlinking related silos.  In the example I provided above, if they suddenly linked to a newly created page on their website about creating an online casino account it would probably be discounted and problematic.  Same thing if they linked to an trusted neighborhood externally.

Here's an excellent recap of linking in general: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

and a highlight of linking to bad neighborhoods: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/more-on-nofollow-at-seomoz-and-how-bad-outbounds-can-impact-websites

If you're internal links are all fairly similar semantically you won't be an outlier.