When it comes to the internal links and navigation of a website, many webmasters forget their real relevance and consider them only as a necessary factor that link pages and nothing more. There are not many numbers of discussions about the importance of internal linking when compared to external linking. However, internal linking has a huge relevance from SEO perspective.
The biggest advantage of internal linking is that it is under your control and you can use it the way you want. They tell the search engines how the content of each page in your website is relevant to the site. Here are a few of the common internal links found in a website. You can also find how each of them is relevant to the website.
- Internal text links
Text, as you know, is mightier than images when it comes to SEO. Image links, Javascript links, image map links – none of these are as effective as text links.
- Category/subcategory links
Any website would have categories and sub categories, though the hierarchy might change depending on the kind of website. It shows the search engines how you want to group your content.
- Related groups links
This is important in the case of ecommerce or news websites that have advantage in showing the related products or related stories links. It increases the usability as well as topical relevance of the page.
- Single item links
Single items in a website have their own importance. However, in the eyes of the search engines they gain their importance not when they are given randomly here and there but when they are given under a proper category, title, etc.
- Sitemap links
The importance of sitemaps is almost a globally agreed point and is worthy of an altogether different post. For search engines as well as users, sitemap link is equally important.
