Principles and rules of internal and external linking

Linking is used to direct users from page to page to increase traffic or introduce and advertise. Linking is done in two types of  external linking  and internal-linking and has a great impact on the SEO of the site. To have a good SEO, you can use this opportunity, but linking must be done in principle. For basic linking, pay attention to the points mentioned in this article.

What is internal-linking?

Internal-linking is very important in increasing the ranking and traffic of the site.

There are two types of linking:

1- Internal linking
2- External linking
Internal-linking is called linking between different pages of a website. The way a website links from one page to another.  External link building  is when another website links to one of the pages of your website, which is also called backlink or external link.

The importance of internal-linking

Optimizing the internal links of the website helps users to better find and access related content and pages, in which case the needs of users can be met in the best way and form.

In addition, crawlers in search engines and optimization can more easily move inside your site posts, pages, and content, which has a very good and positive effect on you. In other words,  internal linking, if done in a principled and standard way, will have a positive and good effect on indexing the website address and pages.

Bounce rate, the most important measure of users, is inversely related to internal link building. The lower the bounce rate, the better your internal link building is.

The advantage of links for Google

Internal linking allows users to easily access the content they want and spend a lot of time on the website to read and visit the post and benefit from related content easily access them.

If users enter the website and seek to meet their needs, and in the meantime encounter their favorite content, they will also refer to other pages of the site to obtain more relevant content. They will spend a lot of time on the site, which causes Reduces user repulsion and bounce rate. The lower the bounce rate, the better, and the higher the Google score for that website.

When  internal linking  is done inside the website, users who enter the website and read the content of the site, if that content is fruitful and useful for them, will follow the other content of the site with more interest and enthusiasm.

With internal linking, the site traffic will increase significantly, and the bounce rate will decrease. As the bounce rate on the size decreases, the SEO of the site will improve And Google will put the website in a better position.

Principles and rules of linking

1- Linking related content

The first and most important point in internal link building is to link related content, pages, and websites to each other because linking related content is very effective. The best way to get  backlinks  is from sites of the same type and related, so you should produce and link to content and content of the same category and type or related to each other. Of course, you should note that the titles of the posts are not the same, because in this case, you will have problems with keyword optimization.

2- Managing the number of external links

If the number of external links is more, it will cause a decrease in quality and credit, then use a low number of external links between 1 and 5 items.

3- Considering various and principled anchor texts

Anchor text  is the word or phrase on which you are linking, and through that word, you link to other pages. In the past, it was sensible to choose any word or phrase as an anchor text, but today, with Google's new algorithms focusing and sensitive on anchor texts, you need to be more careful in choosing the right word or phrase as an anchor text. The advanced penguin algorithm examines anchor texts seriously and carefully.

Words or phrases are selected as anchor text that resembles a keyword, keyword synonyms, part of the keyword, the keyword itself, and prefixes and suffixes. Choosing this type of keyword is very appropriate, natural, and successful. Anchor texts should not be more than one sentence or more than two words and two phrases; observe they're appropriate length. Do not use paragraphs to link to other pages, and ensure that the anchor texts are meaningful and close to the keywords.

It is very important to note that after linking, do not change your anchor text in any way and do not edit it because doing so has a very negative effect on your site's SEO. If all the pages of the website are linked to each other through a keyword, you can consider backlinks to access each of the pages.

4- Creating links and persuading users to click on them

The best type of link building is a link that users click on, or in other words, the  click-through rate  is high.

The links with the highest click-through rates are as follows:

Related pages are linked to each other because if a user is on the same page and likes that page and likes it, he/she will refer to similar and related pages 100%. So linking to related pages is the best type because it increases traffic and visits and increases click-through rate.

Do not use old methods to better link and persuade more users. For example, avoid writing words like read more, here, next, etc., because the time for such tricks has passed, and it will upset the balance of anchor texts.

Of course, using these words and phrases for  external links  is useful and effective, but apart from the negative effect, it has no other effect on internal linking.

As a site owner, you need to know the needs of users, and by recognizing their needs, try to produce content that meets their needs or direct them to pages that meet their needs. Encourage users to click on links and ask them to click on specific links to access items.

To better identify the links to persuade the user, the color of the links must be different from the color of the text to differentiate them. You can BOLD it for better display and for the text of the links to be more distinct than the color of the text.

5- Scatter the links inside the text

It is very important to scatter the links within the text and content and to avoid the accumulation of links in one section. Scattering links between texts should be done professionally; link aggregation will not have a good effect.

The important points in in-text linking are as follows:

Links that are at the top of the text are very important, so it is better to place links that are important and useful at the beginning of the text and content.

If the length of the anchor text you choose to link to is more than two words, it is more likely to persuade users to click.

Anchor headers h3 and h4 are good texts for linking, and you can use them for better linking.

6- Balancing the number of links

When linking from one page to another, some credit is transferred from the first page to the second page. This means that the first page confirms the credibility and quality of the second page and introduces it to its page users to provide more. So when linking, you should be careful not to use too many links because Google considers it as spam or blacklisted and will have negative effects behind it. On the other hand, too many internal or external links within a post will confuse users. All users prefer a website with useful content and a better structure and meet all their needs. So keep a balance in using internal links.

7- Sharing the credibility of the pages through link building

Many SEOs and experts believe that linking from one page with more traffic to one with less traffic will also increase the traffic to that low page. In this way, by linking a post that has 200 visits per day, you can use it to increase the credibility and visit the post that has about ten visits per month. To increase page views and low-traffic posts, you can use high-traffic pages and link them to each other to increase traffic.

8- Consider the value of the pages that are linked

As we said, Google's new algorithms focus more on quality than quantity. Therefore, the content that you link to each other to increase traffic and credibility should have more value that is worth liking and worth reading and visiting by the user.

For example, a page with detailed descriptions and useful content is better than a page with brief descriptions. So if you want to have good linking and get points from Google's optimization engine , it is better to consider the quality of the linked pages because Google cares a lot about the quality of content and posts.  Linking old content  When you link new content to old content, Google also examines and optimizes old content. In this case, the chances and probability of displaying old content in the top rankings and  increase the site ranking  increases.

9- Testing, checking, and editing spelling or grammar mistakes

The presence of misspellings in the inline texts that are linked will have a negative impact on your  internal linking  and site ranking and will reduce the value of linking, so focus on correcting them.