Interlinking is the process of linking one page on a website to another page on the same website. This is done to provide more information to the user, to make it easier for users to navigate the website, and to spread link equity (ranking power) throughout the website. Interlinking is a common practice in UI/UX design and is considered one of the best (SEO) Search Engine Optimization practices for a number of reasons.
Importance of Interlinking in SEO
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Interlinking helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of a website. When a search engine crawls a website, it follows links to discover new pages. By interlinking pages, you are effectively creating a map for the search engine to follow, which helps it understand the relationships between different pages on the website. This can improve the crawlability of the website and make it easier for search engines to index the pages.
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Interlinking helps distribute link equity throughout a website. Link equity is the ranking power that a link passes to the page it is linking to. When a page with a lot of link equity links to a page with little or no link equity, it can help boost the ranking of the latter page. By interlinking pages on a website, you can help distribute this link equity and improve the overall ranking of the website.
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Interlinking can also help improve the user experience on a website. When a user is reading an article or blog post, they may be interested in learning more about a specific topic that is mentioned. By interlinking related pages or articles, you can provide the user with additional information and keep them on the website longer. This can also help reduce bounce rates (the percentage of users who leave the website after viewing only one page) and increase overall engagement with the website.
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In addition to the benefits mentioned above, interlinking can also help improve the discoverability of pages on a website. When a page is linked to multiple locations on a website, it can increase the chances that it will be found by search engines and users. This is especially important for pages that may not be linked to from external websites or that may be buried deep within the website's hierarchy.
There are a few best practices to keep in mind when interlinking pages on a website. Scrrum Labs, the SEO experts in Delhi can help business with the best practices in the market to strategize your SEO and inturn improving your visibility. Some practices among them are using descriptive and relevant anchor text (the text that is linked) when interlinking pages. This will help search engines understand the context of the link and the relationship between the pages. It will also help users understand where the link will take them before they click on it.
It is also important to avoid over-linking or "link stuffing." This is when a website has an excessive number of links on a page, often with irrelevant or low-quality anchor text. This can be seen as spammy by search engines and can actually hurt the ranking of the website.
Here are a few examples of interlinking:
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Linking to related articles or blog posts within a blog post: For example, if you are writing a blog post about SEO and you mention the importance of keyword research, you could link to a previous blog post about keyword research that you have written.
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Linking to product pages from a category page: If you have an e-commerce website, you might have a category page for men's clothing and a separate page for each individual product. You can interlink these pages by linking to the product pages from the category page.
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Linking to a contact page from the footer of every page: This makes it easy for users to find the contact page no matter which page they are on.
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Linking to a privacy policy from the footer of every page: This is a common practice to help users easily access important information about how their personal data is used on the website.
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Linking to a sitemap page from the footer of every page: A sitemap page is a page that lists all of the pages on a website in a hierarchical structure. By linking to the sitemap page from every page on the website, you can make it easy for users to find the page they are looking for.
In conclusion, interlinking is the process of linking one page on a website to another page on the same website. It helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of a website, it helps distribute link equity throughout the website, it can improve the user experience, and it can improve the discoverability of pages on the website. By following best practices and avoiding over-linking, interlinking can be a powerful tool for improving the SEO of a website.
