Internal Linking and Search Engine Optimization – Final Thoughts

Ok, so your thinking to yourself. “Great, now one more thing to worry about–making sure all of the link juice internally is going to the right place.” It is actually easier than it sounds and is not as complex. There are some real estate sites out there (which I won’t out, but will be happy to share with you if you drop me a line.) that are adding mass  quantities of pages that have a sentence or two of text and about 100 internal links to other pages on their site…

What is the reason for this?? You guessed it! SPAMMIN and JAMMIN. Do I agree with this approach? NO. Why? Because it does not pass my test for defensibility:

1) Does it enhance (or at least not DETRACT from) the user experience?

2) Does it utilize techniques that Google and other search engines are rewarding? (Deeds, not words here!)

3) Is this linking technique something that major search engines are trying to screen sites for in order to penalize or devalue this technique? (How do you know? –Research!) How far off do I think they are from accomplishing that? How big of a priority is it to them?

4) Is it (the linking method)  a natural part of the core of the web?

There are a few other questions that I ask myself as well, but i won’t go into them here yet.

Bottom line: Putting pages with essentially a keyword loaded sentence or two plus 100 internal links fails Question 1 right off the bat in that it detracts severely from a user’s experience.

The right way to do it is to think of all of the NATURAL and DEFENSIBLE interlinking that you can put into your site. Sitemaps on every page. Links between posts. WELL designed navigation. Links back to the home page FROM every page.

Finding World class strategies for doing this is what I am about. Happy to consult with you and provide you with some REAL answers for your site in this regard.