Sunday, March 28, 2010

Top Six Internal Linking and Tactics to Get Top Google Rankings (2)

3) Use descriptive & different phrases to point to the same inner page.
The words that are in the text of a link (also known as the anchor text) affect your search engine rankings. For example, the anchor text in the two links above is "Your Website". If enough of these links that were on quality and valuable sites, including your website's inner pages, pointed to the same page, it would eventually rank well in Google when someone searches for the phrase "your website".

Therefore, be sure to make the anchor text in all your internal links the phrases you want the pages to be found for in Google. If you have a page that sells "blue widgets", make the anchor text in links on other pages within your website that point to this page "blue widgets". Do it like this:
<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm">Blue Widgets</a>

Going back to the number 1 tactic above, you would be far better off making the anchor text in all your footer links as descriptive as possible. If you want to rank well in Google for "affordable blue widgets" then use this in your links that point to this page:
<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm">Affordable Blue Widgets</a>

Finally, vary your anchor text when pointing to the same page within your website. For instance, on some of your pages you could link to your Blue Widgets page with the anchor text of "blue widgets", then on other pages link to it using "affordable blue widgets" and then maybe use "widgets that are blue". This allows you to get the page ranked for multiple terms and helps the user since you are being descriptive and making your anchor text better match the content of the page it is on.

4) Make links in your content.
If you have text on your site, make some of the words within the text, links that point to other pages within your website. For instance, if you have an article about blue widgets, or a page that describes how great your blue widgets are, make the first or second occurrence of the phrase "blue widgets" in the text a link that points to your Blue Widgets page.

5) The Home link solution.
If your website is typical, you will probably have a link on every page that points back to your homepage. And you should because this helps users. By doing this, you are supplying a lot of link value to the homepage since it is getting all these internal links pointing back to it. Since in the number three tactic I recommended that you make your anchor text the same as what you want to rank for, the word "home" does you no good. Assume that you are not trying to get your homepage ranked for the word "home", so make the anchor text what you do want it to get ranked for. The other option is to add the "nofollow" tag to all your 'Home' links, thereby canceling out the word "home" altogether.

6) Make important pages at most 2 folders deep with your site and at most two clicks away from your homepage.
The farther away a page is, the worse it ranks. So if you put a page in a folder that is five folders deep within your website folder structure, Google will likely consider that page not as important as a page only one folder deep. Also, make the pages in your website that are most important to get ranked two or less clicks away from the homepage. This is good for users and allows Google to index these pages more quickly.

By following these top six internal linking tactics, you will be far ahead of the competition, you will rank better in Google and you will be making your website visitors' lives easier.

Source From SitePro News

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