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by Wayne Smith
Internal Links are essential for SEO. While Google handles internal links differently than its predecessors; the differences don't matter unless the site has a content silo. The page rank algorithm (itself) does not consider the home page as the most important or authoritative page on a site. A content silo can build its authority, which if it gets more external links than the home page can have more authority than the home page ... in which case build internal links from the silo page.
Bing has historically considered how many clicks away from the home page content is as a factor. This more traditional approach means silos that are not linked from the home page do not surface in Bing. Subject to change of course. Google's page rank became part of the public domain when the patent expired.
For example: Forbes has had a section on their site that mostly are reviews written by third parties and operates independently from the Forbes news site. External links to these Forbe pages raised the importance of these sections. Bing does not index this content as its algorithm maintains the home page as the most important but Google does index them and these reviews dominated Google search because these sections on Forbes gained importance.
Infoseek Pioneered using links
Infoseek pioneered using links to set the order of its database, which was basically a count of how many links it had found pointing to a URL. It did not rank based on site.
Excite Pioneered using content silos
Excite indexed from the home page down but considered outbound links as a relevancy factor ... Excite's vision was to send the user to the resource page, leveraging them so that people could find relevant links from these pages.
Google Innovated page rank
Page rank allows content silos within a site to gain authority and become visible in search.
- Some YouTube channels are fully indexed and appear at the top of search based on authority ... while other YouTube channels do not; Because the Channel can gain authority not provided by YouTube.
- Sections or silos of content on websites such as state election results can gain authority beyond that given by the home page and appear at the top of the search.
Google allowed helpful content that was otherwise hidden or buried in other search engines to become findable ... Because page rank is not site rank. But not using internal linking is de-optimizing the page if relevant links could be provided. People visiting the site expect a user friendly interface to find all pages ... and the worst that can happen by adding an internal link is it is ignored if it lacks relevancy.
Internal link structure on a traditional site
On a traditional site with no content silos and the majority of external links to the home page ... the importance or authority of a link would be based on how many clicks it is from the home page. Assuming the links are relevant the capacity of sub-pages to rank higher is based on keyword competition. Content with less competition will always rank higher, so long tail sub-pages generally have a higher position in search than the home page; they have a lower authority or ability to rank and a lower ability to help other pages rank.
Internal Links Content Relevance
The anchor text of a link is a signal for both people and bots about the subject of the page. But, the page with the link and the page receiving the link need to show relevance as a co-factor.
There are many related subjects for any page.
- Using the entity-relationship model pages that are hierarchically related in the entity model are relevant.
- Content about cooking is related by entities with ingredients.
- A local business entity like a restaurant has as part of its entity hours of operation and menu items.
- Points of Interest has a relationship to physical or tourist locations
- The skills or tools used by a mentioned profession
- The inventor of the product or service
- Pages talking about the same subject.
- A page about that brings up a person and has a link to more information about that person
- A product review and a link to the product
Text relevancy from the page with a link
- Titles of the pages and on the linked to page.
- Headline above the link on the source page Headline on the linked to page.
- Words in proximity to the link and words on the linked to page.
Even if the link is created by an image (which can have alt text), it exists on an HTML page with text.
Internal or external links are ignored when not relevant.
Linking to Microsoft with the anchor text "Who is more evil than Satan?" will be ignored. Microsoft does not have any on-page relevance to the phrase, although it did before 2005.
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