Are you wondering what you can do next to optimise your website? There are so many possibilities! But today, we’ll go over one of the most overlooked ones: checking internal link structures.
Internal link structures are often forgotten because of the attention paid to backlink profiles. They’re still a big part of smart SEO and optimisation for the user experience, though. That’s why we’re covering how to audit them in today’s guide.
What is an internal link audit for SEO?
An internal link audit is a review of the way the pages on your website are connected to each other. If you’ve never seen an internal link before, here’s one!
That internal link leads to our guide to performing a basic SEO analysis. It’s called an internal link because it leads to another page on our website instead of a page on a different website.
So, again, internal link audits study the way pages on one site are connected.
What’s the role of internal linking in SEO?
Now you might be asking this: why do internal links matter? To answer that, here are some of the things internal links do for your website and SEO:
They support site navigation. These links make it much easier for users to go from one part of your site to another part of it. It helps the way a visitor makes sense of the site and finds relevant content on it.
They spread link equity or juice. Internal links can help distribute PageRank, which is the metric Google uses to assess the importance of a webpage.
They establish site structure. This means internal links play a part in indicating which pages are most important (because you’d link to them most often).
They guide search engines in indexing. By linking to other pages on your website, you can actually direct search engines to them. This can be used to help new pages get indexed.
Why conduct internal link audits regularly?
Doing regular internal link audits is how you discover things like these:
How link equity or link juice flows on your site
How to improve navigation on your site
How to help Google understand and index your site
If you’re wondering why you also can’t do a one-and-done audit, it’s because websites are always changing. You’ve probably added new pages to your website since you first created it. Or you may have deleted old ones or tweaked existing ones in some way.
All of that is normal. However, it can also spawn a number of problems:
Broken links - It’s pretty common to end up with internal links leading to pages that no longer exist. Often, it’s because you forget to fix or remove the link after deleting the page it leads to.
Shoddy link distribution - It’s common to accidentally point too many links at one page while pointing none at another. This can lead to some pages getting ignored.
Orphaned pages - These are pages with no internal links pointing their way. This can make them harder to index for search engines, or harder to find for readers.
Anchor text issues - Sometimes, the text displayed for a hyperlink doesn’t match what it leads to. This can pose a problem for users, who may feel led astray.
Fixing issues like these can dramatically improve the experience you offer visitors. Sometimes, that’s all that stands between you and a conversion.
How often should you do an internal link audit?
There are a lot of tools you can use now to take a peek at your internal links. Ahrefs and SEMrush are two of the top paid options for this.
However, one of the best ones is still Google Search Console. It’s especially useful if you’re doing this because you’re wondering how to improve SEO through enhanced linking. Plus, it’s free!
Here’s how to use it to perform each internal link audit task:
1. To access your Links Report for an overview:
Log into Google Search Console,
Select your property.
In the left-hand menu, click on “Links”.
2. To review your internal links:
Scroll down and find the “Top linked pages (internal)” section.
Click “More” for the report.
3. To analyse the data available on your internal links:
Look for pages with especially high or low internal link numbers.
Look for pages that may not have enough internal links despite being important.
4. To check for crawl errors among your internal links:
Go to “Pages” in the left-hand menu.
Look for errors pertaining to internal links, e.g. 404 errors.
5. To use the URL inspection tool and find indexing issues:
Use the URL inspection tool on your important pages to see how Google views each page.
6. To better analyse your data outside of Google Search Console:
Export your data to a spreadsheet.
Seek patterns and opportunities in the spreadsheet for added insights.
What best practices should you follow after an internal link audit?
The actions you take after an internal link audit will naturally depend on your findings. If you want to know some of the most common fixes for issues, however, here's a quick list:
Look for and fix broken links - 404s and similar errors should be updated to point to the right page. You can also just remove the link, especially if whatever it points to isn’t relevant any longer.
Optimise anchor text - Simply use relevant and descriptive text for your link anchor text instead of phrases that they don’t tell the reader where the link will go.
Find and link to isolated pages - Look for the pages on your site that have no internal links leading to them and link to them!
Tweak link distribution - As mentioned earlier, you should try to match page importance to internal link quantity. Make sure the most important pages on your site have the most links pointing their way.
Use breadcrumbs - This will be of aid to your visitors. Breadcrumbs tell them where they are and can even lead to more chances for internal linking.
Want us to help you with your SEO and internal linking strategy?
The tips we provided above should get you started with your internal linking audit. As we said earlier, however, this isn’t something you do once and leave forever.
In fact, you should monitor your site even after implementing fixes. Otherwise, you’ll never know the impact of the changes and whether or not they did what you wanted.
If you want more help with internal linking and its optimisation, reach out to us at ROMI. Auditing and optimising SEO is a key part of what we do for our clients. To learn more, reach out to us for a no-obligation chat about what you may need for digital marketing.
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