by Stoney deGeyter
Many years ago I put my site through a re-design. I worked hard to make sure everything was done just right, including the images and navigation. But one thing I failed to consider was internal linking, separate from the navigational elements. It wasn"t until much later that I realized how much traffic I was losing because my internal linking was (or lack thereof) wasn"t benefiting my visitors.
In-site link implementation can make a considerable difference in how effective your optimization campaign is. Or isn"t. While your site"s primary and secondary navigation is extremely important, you shouldn"t make that the only way for visitors to get around your website.
There are some stores that I"m OK finding stuff on my own. I don"t need to be guided because I know right where things typically are. But when I walk into a RadioShack, instead of looking around, the first thing I do is ask someone if they can direct me to the product I"m looking for. Usually the helpful associate will walk me over to the wall of accessories and find exactly what I was looking for. I certainly could have found it on my own, but it would have taken me much longer. The personalized service I get at RadioShack keeps bringing me back time and time again.
Think of your navigation as a map that shows where various products or information is throughout your site. Anybody can walk up to the map and figure where they want to go. But good contextual linking is like guiding your visitors to the products or information they want, as they want it.
Good site navigation isn"t jut about providing the map, it"s about giving the personalized touch to guide your visitors to information they want and/or will be helpful to them. Here are some inter-site linking strategies that will help your visitors while also assist with your search engine optimization efforts.
Anchor text
Anybody who has done any kind of link building knows the value of good anchor text for external links pointed into the site. But anchor text is just as important within internal links pointing to other pages within your site. Take a look at these two images and see if you can figure out which one uses better anchor text.
Ok, so I biased you with the red and green circles, but you can clearly see the difference between the anchor text in these images. One clearly uses descriptive keywords in the link. This wasn"t done because the page was being "optimized", but rather just because it made sense to link this way. In the second example, both the links "click here" and "read more" are great calls to action, but provide very little in the way of telling the search engines (or the visitor) what the linked page is all about.
Search engines place a great deal of weight in determining what a page is about simply by looking at the text of the links pointing to the page. But even more importantly, so do people! Did you know that a good majority of skimmers and scanners do little more than read the link text on a page. For busy people like me, the links tell me where I need to go to find the information I"m looking for. "Click here" and "read more" do little to provide me direction. They tell me what to do, but not why I want to do that.
There are several options when deciding on what to do with your link text. The most important thing to remember is that your link anchor text should accurately reflect the information on the destination page. Here are some examples of what you do and don"t want to do:
Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.Learn more about preparing personal tax returns.Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.
So now, which is the correct way to use anchor text?
Ok, so that was a bit of a trick question. There is more than one right answer. In fact, the only wrong answer is the first one. The other three are all decent solutions to both using great anchor text and having the call to action for usability. I"m not certain there is any best way, it all just depends on your site. My preference is number four, but only if your text isn"t already loaded down with links. Having two links instead of one can possibly clutter your page if you have a lot going on already. I would also nofollow the "click here", but more on that next.
Nofollow strategies
I won"t go into the history of the nofollow or argue it"s merits here. If you don"t know much about the nofollow then I suggest that you go read Jennifer Laycock"s article about nofollow here. (Notice the anchortext? I got my call to action, "read" and the keywords "nofollow" and "Jennifer Laycock" in there. Read that all by itself and you know exactly what to expect when you click that link.)
There is also argument about the merits of using the nofollow attribute to sculpt PageRank on your site. I"m not recommending any aggressive link sculpting strategies here, unless you really know what you are doing, but there are several ways you can implement nofollow tags that will be to your advantage.
Let"s start with a brief explanation of the nofollow. In theory, the nofollow attribute tells the search engines not to follow that link. In practice it tells the search engines not to pass any link value from that page to the page being linked to. The search engines may still follow the link and the page being linked to can still get link juice from other sources, just not from yours.
Here how the nofollow attribute is added to a link:
<a rel="nofollow" href="blocked.htm">Blocked link.</a>
One excellent use of the nofollow attribute is to block link juice being passed from certain anchor texts. Remember our link examples above? I suggested nofollowing the "click here" text. Here is how I would implement the nofollow:
Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.
The "click here" is a good action link but we don"t want that passing any link juice to the next page. After all, the next page isn"t about clicking anywhere, it"s about preparing personal tax returns. That"s the link we want to make sure gets the juice.
To use another example from above, the baby products have two links to the product page, the product title and the price.
I highlighted the nofollowed links on this page in pink. Since we already have the product name in the anchor text, there is no reason to dilute that by linking to the same page using irrelevant anchor text.
Related products
One of the best ways to provide additional internal links to other pages is by cross linking related products. Not only do you get the additional links but this is a perfect opportunity to create additional sales by providing shoppers with additional information on things that they are most likely to want to purchase as well.
Here is one of my favorite examples. A year or so ago I was searching for the newest season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. When I got to the product page I was treated to some additional DVDs that the store thought I would be interested in.
They were right.
Linking to other products doesn"t have to be as complicated as Amazon, where they look at your purchase history as well as the history of others who have made similar purchases. It can be as easy as just deciding which products should be "related". If someone buys a jumper cables, they might also be interested in a jack and lug wrench. If someone purchases a crib they might also be interested in bedding. If someone is interested in a three-screen monitor splitter they might also be interested in purchasing a couple of additional monitors as well.
Paying attention to your internal linking strategies can pay dividends when it comes to both search engine optimization and generating additional sales. Creating smart keyword rich contextual links, nofollowing non-relevant textual links and cross linking products is a win-win-win scenario. It"s great for search engines, helpful to your visitors, and helps you generate more sales as a result.
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>>Source Link
>>Blog: Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing
>>Publish Date: 6/19/2008 7:04:39 AM
>>Keywords: your link
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