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3 Ways To Optimize Internal Linking Ep. 534
Internal linking is 100% within a site owner's control and optimizing it by distributing link flow, reducing link loss, and eliminating duplicate content can improve rankings without building backlinks.
Key takeaways
- Internal link structure is the one SEO signal site owners have 100% control over, requiring no outreach or negotiation.
- Remove extraneous links near the top of pages, such as job openings or privacy pages, to redirect link flow to important pages.
- Linking to social media accounts or login pages from your site causes link flow loss; use no-follow tags on those links.
- Duplicate content pages share too many words with each other; Matt recommends no more than 20% word overlap between pages.
- Orphan pages with no internal links receive no contextual signals, making it harder for Google to understand their value or topic.
The single thing that you have 100% control over is your link structure.
About this episode
3 Ways To Optimize Internal LinkingPoor internal link structure can end up harming your site's rankings. At SMX Next, Jonathan Epstein showed how marketers can prevent PageRank loss with better internal linking.Presenter: Jonathan Epstein
Questions this episode answers
What are the three ways to optimize internal linking according to this episode?
The three ways, as presented by Jonathan Epstein, CEO of Bruco at SMX Next, are: first, optimize distribution of link flow by removing extraneous links and adding links to important pages; second, reduce link flow loss by avoiding links to non-search-friendly pages and using no-follow tags; and third, eliminate penalty factors like duplicate content.
What is an orphan page and why does it hurt SEO?
An orphan page is a page on your site that links to no other pages. Without internal links connecting it to the rest of the site, Google receives no contextual signals about how that page relates to other pages or how valuable it is, making it harder to rank.
How much content overlap is too much between pages on a website?
According to the episode, Google considers it a penalty factor if pages share more than half their words with each other. Matt Bertram recommends keeping word overlap even lower, around 20%, and warns that many sites have pages sharing 90% of their words, which is a detrimental situation.
Can a website rank without backlinks by focusing only on internal linking?
Matt Bertram says he was previously able to rank websites without any off-page backlinks using internal linking and on-page optimization alone. He also observed that sites hit hard by a spam update were those heavily reliant on backlink campaigns, while sites with fewer off-page links ranked quite well.
In their words
Building a high quality, relevant backlink profile is important, but optimizing your internal link structure and eliminating risk factors is vital to reaping the most benefits from ranking signals.
Chris Burrus
We have seen a lot of websites here recently that they had done really good on page and they were all kind of orphan pages and they weren't linked together. And the blogs didn't really have internal links and it just wasn't something that people paid attention to.
Matt Bertram
Terms defined in this episode
- Link equity
- The term Matt Bertram uses instead of link juice or page rank to describe the ranking value passed between pages through links, both internal and external.
- Orphan page
- A page on a website that has no internal links pointing to or from it, leaving Google without contextual signals to understand its relevance or importance.
- Link flow
- A measurement of how important your pages are relative to other pages on the internet, determined by both external backlinks and internal linking structure.
- No-follow link
- A link tag that signals to search engines not to pass link equity to the destination page, recommended for links to social media accounts or partner sites to prevent link flow loss.
Full transcript is being added.
This episode answers
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
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