These days link building is a “hot topic”, we are all obsessed with getting more links and hopefully most of you will be obsessively looking for links the right way.
Yes, it’s fair to say that we love to rant about how to create more backlinks to our web properties, after all, it’s one of the “most essential building blocks” to getting more traffic and improving search engine rankings, TRUE?
But in addition to discussing offsite link building and SEO, we can’t lose focus on the importance of onsite link building (interweaving posts and pages on your blog or website).
So today’s post is appropriate as I want to share with you 5 smart ways to optimize your internal anchor text links that will help you greatly reduce your bounce rate, improve user experience on your site and share equally valuable search engine links between the awesome pages on your site and generally improve your on-page SEO.
How to Optimize Your Internal Anchor Tex Links
1. Combine long and short tail keywords
Okay, my first tip is to use a combination of “unique keywords” and “long tail phrases” to link to other content on your website. Here are a couple of examples of unique and long-tail keywords:
Example A) Create a WordPress blog on Bluehost in less than 10 minutes! (Use a single hyperlinked keyword.)
Example B) Check out my amazing email list building workbook and increase your subscription conversion rate now! (Use a long-tail phrase.)
2. Vary your anchor text links and make them flow naturally
When interfacing with other content on your website, make sure it appears and flows naturally. This is important for both your users and search engines. Avoid using too many exact match keyword anchor texts, always add variety to your anchor text. There is an awesome SEOmoz post on exact match anchor text worth reading here. Okay, here are some examples of how to make anchor text look natural:
Example A) If you want to learn how to promote your YouTube channel effectively, we have 50+ tips and tricks for you, click here to learn more. (This example shows a NON-optimized anchor text link with no keyword relevance. Although it may seem natural, ‘Click here’ is just a generic phrase. It would have been better if it had a ‘promote your YouTube channel’ anchor link) .
3. Link to ‘relevant content’
You may laugh, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve visited a website and clicked on a link that took me to a page that was completely unrelated and irrelevant. Linking to “relevant content” is very important, especially if you want to improve and maintain a good user experience for your visitors and improve your search rankings.
4. Use keyword link descriptions
Link descriptions are those ‘hover texts’ you see appear when you hover over a link, as if you need a reminder. It’s a good practice to make sure you always add a keyword description when linking, because in addition to the SEO benefits, it also helps your visitors know exactly what a particular link is about and where it will take them when they click on it. , again. thinking about your user experience.
5. Do not go crazy and link with everything
My final advice is that while it’s good to have a healthy balance of well-optimized anchor text links, both for your site’s users and for better search engine rankings, don’t go crazy and link to absolutely nothing. everything, A) it looks spammy and B) it will look absolutely unnatural.
So let’s recap this week’s tips:
• Combine long and short tail keywords
• Vary your anchor text and avoid exact match keywords
• Link to relevant content
• Use link descriptions with keywords
• Don’t go crazy and link everything, keep it clean
So there you have it folks, my top 5 tips for improving and optimizing your internal links, for all the right reasons of course.
To your audience…
OK, it’s your turn to add your opinion. Do you have any tips, ideas and suggestions that you would like to add? If so, I’d love to hear from you, so start the conversation in the comments section below, as always troops, enjoy the rest of your week.
