Google and other search engines give much attention to both internal and external links on your blog, the words that you use in your links, and which pages you link to. A large part of your search engine optimization is naming your anchor text and using internal links correctly.
A good internal linking structure can increase the number of pages your blog gets indexed in search engines. It can also increase the authority your blog articles receive and can improve their search engine rankings.
I will now look at the steps you can take to optimize your blog internal linking structure. Following 8 steps will help Google and other search engines find, index, and rank your blog site.
1. Text based navigation. Make sure your blog navigation and internal links are crawlable. Use text instead of images to display important content and links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. Also if you have Flash navigation or your links are contained within Javascript, they will not be followed by the search engines. So keep it simple and use good old text based navigation.
2. Breadcrumbs and tags. Make a blog site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every blog page should be reachable from at least one static text link. Breadcrumbs are a great internal linking tool. Try also to have between 3 and 7 tags in each of your blog posts.
3. Anchor text. Your links should indicate what they are linking to. Phrase like “click here” as a link anchor text does not indicate what you are linking to. The anchor text should describe where the link will take your blog reader and should include keywords you want to rank for.
4. Pretty permalinks. Make your blog permalinks pretty and keyword-rich.
5. Create a sitemap. Google uses your XML sitemap to learn about the structure of your blog and to increase the coverage of your blog pages. Offer a site map to your users as well with links that point to the important parts of your blog. A good sitemap is useful for visitors, useful for search engines and will improve your blog crawlability.
6. Permanent redirect your domain name and be consistent in your linking behavior. If you decide to link to homepage.com, always link to homepage.com, and not to www.homepage.com or www.homepage.com/index.php.
7. Link to your content. Link to your popular blog posts and latest posts from your blog sidebar. Link to your relevant blog posts at the end of your blog article. Use in-content links within your blog articles as well. These links have a higher click through rate usually, and they improve the usability and add value to your blog readers.
8. Check for broken links Search engines and your blog readers do not like broken links so use the Broken Link Checker WordPress plugin to check for broken links.
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{ 13 comments }
STUMBLED!
Good post, #3 and #6 are something a lot of people do not do.
But should.
Thanks for the support!
Same here – never knew about the broken link checker plugin!
Thank You
I am glad I could help! Broken Link Checker is very good, runs in the background, and automatically finds broken links and puts a notice in your dashboard about it.
No problem! I use WordPress personally so everything I write about is WordPress focused. You may still be able to find same plugins for Blogger though.
I would also add (as I made the mistake), don’t use an ‘exotic’ blogging platform. Poorly designed templates over which you have no control can lead you into an SEO nightmare from which the only solution is to port out to something mainstream.
Definitely! Thanks for the good tip!
Good post. Most of the tips I am using. But I had first heard of Breadcumb’s.
Going to subscribe to your blog!
Thanks for help!
I’ve tried to submit my sitemap to google, and I keep getting an error message. It says It can’t find it because of the www in front of my URL, but if I don’t include it when I submit my blog, google couldn’t verify it. I’m confused. Does anybody know how I can do this with a wordpress.com blog?
@Scott – I don’t use WordPress.com personally (and would recommend you to switch to self-hosting WordPress as well) but just did a quick search and found this article to help you out: support.wordpress.com/sitemaps/ . Good luck!
hi..came to your blog through twitter. Have a newswebsite in wordpress newspostonline.com. It is being indexed by google news at the moment. The problem is that while any aticle posted in appearing in google news within minutes, it does not appear in web search even if I do “my site specific search” thru google. It takes more than a day to come in google web search. Do you think this is normal or there is some problem. Can you help?
@anjan01 – I do not have much experience with Google News but believe News and standard search listings have nothing to do with each other. Google might have approved you as a “news” site but your SEO might still not be good enough to rank? I would suggest working on standard SEO. Keyword rich domain, permalinks, articles, and having quality inbound links with good anchor text.
I think it's normal. Google News and Google Organic Search are not the same so that you're in News doesn't have to mean that you will get good listings automatically. For Organic listings you need to build unique content and good links.