Links play a crucial role in website promotion. Most people understand that backlinks from other authoritative sites boost your site’s ranking – the more you have, the higher your position. If the number of quality backlinks surpasses those of your competitors, you stand a strong chance of landing in the top spot. Of course, internal optimization, the site’s technical health, and user behavior also matter, but quality link building remains one of the most powerful tools for SEO.
While external links can significantly benefit your website, internal links are just as important. This type of linking, often called interlinking or relinking, falls under on-page SEO. Although external links generally carry more weight, internal links still play a vital role.
To put it simply, imagine your website as a person. Internal links represent self-respect, while external links reflect how others respect you. Both are essential and complement one another. Just as it’s hard to gain respect from others without self-respect, a website without proper internal linking may raise red flags for Google. If other websites link to you, but you don’t reference your own pages, it appears inconsistent.
That said, self-respect alone isn’t enough to get you far – the same applies to links. Internal links provide a solid foundation, but without external backlinks, it’s unlikely you’ll achieve high visibility or rankings for competitive keywords.
How Do Internal Links Work in SEO?
There are many internal linking strategies, but one classic approach works for virtually all websites: linking from blog content to commercial pages.
A blog allows you to publish informational content, which typically faces less competition than commercial pages. By targeting the right keywords and topics, you can rank highly in search results. The goal of these articles is to convert readers into customers.
Internal linking from your blog involves pointing readers to relevant business pages. For example, while reading this piece about SEO, you might be interested in SEO services Calgary. A link to a relevant service page fits naturally within the content. When Google crawls this article, it pays attention to the links and their anchor text (the clickable words).
The more internal links you have, the clearer it becomes to Google what the linked page is about. This brings us back to self-respect – you’re signaling confidence in your own content by linking to it. One key rule to remember is to vary your anchor text. Repeating the same anchors across multiple pages can trigger spam filters. Internal linking lays the foundation, and when combined with external link building, it can drive faster results.
Can You Achieve SEO Results with Internal Links Alone?
Yes, it’s possible! Concepts like page authority and user behavior play a role in this. Let’s say our local marketing agency Calgary ranks #1 for several commercial keywords, but only the homepage performs well – service pages might lag behind. By strategically using internal links, we can pass authority from the homepage to underperforming service pages.
However, this shouldn’t be done haphazardly. Careful linking between commercial pages is necessary. On the other hand, linking from a blog is generally safer for transferring authority.
For instance, if an informational blog post attracts significant traffic and ranks #1 for certain keywords, it generates strong behavioral signals – readers engage with the content and click through to other links. This signals to Google that the linked pages are valuable, often boosting their rankings.
To use another analogy, if your self-respect and integrity shine brightly, people will naturally notice without you needing to shout about it. Google sees this “shine” and rewards you with higher rankings. In this way, the authority and engagement of a well-performing blog post can transfer to the business pages it links to, helping them climb the search results.
