search In part one of "The UV SEO Series", I introduced the series and didn't get into anything specific. In part two, I wrote about having one website address. I'm continuing on track with the onsite SEO portion with part three, internal linking strategies. It's another article that's longer than I anticipated, so please take your time.


Why is internal linking important?

To understand, you have to think like a robot. A robot has no incentive to visit another page unless it's linked to the current page in some way. If there are no links pointing to another page, it may eventually get to the other page, but it will take longer and it may not happen until a subsequent visit. Without links, it has to rely on other factors such as site maps, archive pages and category pages. Why take chances?

From personal observation I can tell you that my entire blog is not re-indexed frequently. Only the new pages get indexed on every visit and old pages only get crawled if there's been some kind of change to them or if new internal links point to them.

Develop a keyword list.

When you write a new article, you need to link to any articles related to the current one and it's easy to do. You don't have to focus on keywords because the relevancy is self-explanatory.

If you're targeting keywords for your entire site, or for specific pages, internal linking will build up the keyword authority. Rather than try to explain it in long form, I'll give you examples from this blog. My main keyword is Philippines and some related keywords are Jollibee Philippines and Philippine Airlines. That's just a fraction of them and I want you to notice how I used the keywords as anchor text.

My internal linking strategy is to link to the pages for my chosen keywords at least 10 times; 10 times for the main keyword and 10 times for the related keywords. The more related articles I write, the easier it is to accomplish. This is called "link clustering".

Use the header, the sidebars, and the footer.

You can use the header and footer to link every page to your home page. You don't want to waste the link authority on a general term such as "home" and there's an easy way to avoid it. Have the home link point to another page that redirects back to the home page. On that page, use something like this:

<?php
header ("Location: http://www.untwistedvortex.com/");
exit;
?>

If you don't have PHP running, you can use a meta redirection to accomplish the same thing. Just make sure to specify a delay of 0 seconds. I don't have the code handy (I never use it) or I'd give you an example.

Notice how I use "Untwisted Vortex in the Philippines" in the footer. There's the main keyword that links directly to the home page from every page.

The sidebar is a great place to link to every related keyword. I have my "The Philippines" widget in the right sidebar (for now) and my keywords are in each of the titles so I don't have to manipulate the anchor text.

Work with every page, not just new pages.

People have a tendency to link back to old articles when they write new ones. You should go through your pages (and I have over 1300 here, rapidly approaching 1400) one by one to link to both relevant pages and pages with the targeted keywords. While you're doing that, you'll get the opportunity to reword specific phrases and such to optimize keyword usage.

It doesn't have to be done all at once. Working with 10 to 20 pages at a time, and only once per week, should be sufficient. If you get in the habit of doing it, it gets easier and easier.

Side Benefits

Link building is the most boring thing you can do with your website, but it's also the most necessary thing to do. It has side benefits that can't be ignored, however, even if those benefits aren't readily apparent.

While you're building your internal links, you'll see what you've been focusing on as opposed to what you should be focusing on as your main topics. If you find that you stray from your main topics too often, this will help you get back on track.

Internal link building will also help you generate ideas. Perhaps you meant to write about something and forgot about it. Perhaps you didn't spend enough effort on a particular topic. The pieces start to come together as you build your internal links.

Coming in Part Four

In part four, I'm going to emphasize meta descriptions and meta keywords. Google may be the biggest search engine in town, but it isn't the only varmint you should be gunning for.

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