Optimizing Internal Links to boost Google Ranking

Building back links from other sites pointing to your site is one of the most important strategies for improving ranking in the major search engines like Google. Just as equally important is creating the correct Internal link strategy of your Navigation within your site.

To explain what I mean, there are two common mistakes with regards to optimizing your Internal Navigation linking correctly.

1. A site Navigation made up of graphical buttons (images).
2. A dynamic Navigation Bar developed using Javascript.

These look great from a design perspective, but Google and many other search engines ignore these forms of Navigation when crawling a web page. The result being that other pages within the site do not get crawled and indexed. Also, because Google cannot read the overall content of the site, it would assume there is not enough content or relevancy to give the pages any significant ranking position.

To correct this problem, you have to create text links for navigation on each of your web pages. Google and other search engines look specifically for text links which they use to crawl to other pages of your site.

The most common way to achieve this without diminishing the design layout of a page is by positioning the navigation text links in the footer of a page in small type, in possible one line separated by vertical line separators - i.e.:
Home | Our Products | About Us | Contact Us

Now this is fine and corrects the Internal Linking problem. The Search Engines can now crawl all your internal pages with ease. But there is one other problem. The text in these Navigation links have to contain the Keywords you want your pages to rank highly for in the Search Engines like Google. Using the example above, you would be asking Google to rank your Home page for the Keyword "Home". That's not going to help you at all. So let's say you sold different colored "Widgets". And let's say that you want to rank highly in the Search Engines for the word "Widgets". All you do is change the Home link text to "Widgets" and other internal pages to the relevant text Keywords you want those pages to rank highly for. So the Text Navigation line could look like this:
Widgets | Blue Widgets | Green Widgets | Widget Products | About Us | Contact Us for Widgets

Follow this Text Navigation technique and before long you will have gained a number of important links which will help you improve your Google ranking.

I hope you find this article interesting. Please do comment back on anything you don't understand. Thank you for reading.

All the best for your future success,
Steve SEO UK

Visit Sta.rtUp.Biz - The Small Business Social Network

Tags: back linking, google ranking, linking, marketing, optimization, search engine optimization, seo uk

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9 Comments

Comment by Debbie on August 29, 2008 at 11:42am: Thanks for sharing your valuable info, Steve. I learned some things that will be helpful to me. Thanks! ~Debbie

Comment by Keren Wigley on August 21, 2008 at 11:55pm: Great article Steve - well written, easy to understand and very useful. Thank you. Cheers, Keren.

Comment by Ann on August 20, 2008 at 4:18pm: Hi Steve-thanks the info, useful stuff - would you mind dropping by my ning site and joining, even though you are in UK you have skills to share
www.britsabroad.ning.com
thanks
ann

Comment by Alexander M Zoltai on August 18, 2008 at 2:17pm: Thanks!

I've settled on a TagCloud and TopPosts in my side bar...

It's getting very interesting seeing which posts are visited (one I wrote 5 months ago is still at the top of the list and that's because of it's image !)

Also, the search terms that get people to my blog can sometimes be a real Hoot !!

~ Alex

Comment by Steve SEO UK on August 18, 2008 at 2:05pm: Thanks for your comment Alexander.

By the way a Blog is created, you could say that it builds it's own Navigation bar in the column at the side with the Main Headings of each Blog Post being the Button Achor Text link.

If you are trying to achieve a top Google ranking with a particular Keyword Phrase, then yes I would say that an Internal Linking strategy is required. At the end of each post (page) you can sign off to include your chosen Keyword Phrase as an Anchor Text Link and/or use it in the Tags section.

Regards,
Steve.

Comment by Alexander M Zoltai on August 18, 2008 at 1:09pm: Clearly written, certainly.

Question: I have a blog that's the platform for my one link to my business (it's also my deepest creative outlet...). That link leads to an external page I made with Google Page Creator. This is just the way I have to do it 'til I can afford my own domain and hosting situation.

Oh! The Question: On a blog, which has multiple pages within it due to a blog's nature, is internal linking something to think about?

~ Alex

Comment by Steve SEO UK on August 18, 2008 at 10:19am: Hi Faye,

Your site www.WriteYourBestSellerNow.com does use text navigation and yes the word "Home" as mentioned in my article. Trouble is, changing the text in your navigation would destroy the sequence of navigating through the pages to the final answer - neat idea.

What I did notice was the small copyright text at the bottom of each page. You could include your keywords alongside. Small, discrete but highly effective for getting keyword rich back links.

Thanks for your comment,
Steve.

Comment by Steve SEO UK on August 18, 2008 at 10:12am: Hi Steve,

In answer to your question:

Number 1 - in vogue this with Google is CONTENT, CONTENT and more CONTENT. No, don't give up on building back links to your site - no one is absolutely sure what Google is up to. What is important is that the links come from same theme related sites. Write articles on your products or services and submit them to ezinearticles.com with your keywords in the Bio. It counts as good content pointing to your site.

Number 2 - Good old Firefox. Didn't know about this add-on and must admit, it doesn't seem very helpful for businesses. OK to look after general surfers, but what about the businesses spending advertising dollars to keep the likes of them solvent. (Just my personal rant - sorry).

What marketing site are you talking about. Could have a look and give an assessment.

All the best,
Steve.

Comment by Steve Reeves on August 18, 2008 at 8:48am: Hi Stephen
thanks for making this contribution, and I didn't see any need for you to be nervous about your "style".

Your insight into how Google tracks stuff certainly enlightened me.

Confessing up front I'm a somewhat jaundiced layman on the whole subject of Google page rankings. I'll really appreciate some help getting my brain around a couple of things.

Number 1 - I've heard, and seen lots of evidence that Google now favors content over marketing sites and pushes publications to the top of search results. The result of this is, regardless of SEO, the marketing site isn't going to get seen unless it's through Adwords. Anybody wanting to sell from a site has to get into Google's auction for position.

Number 2 - the latest version of Firefox has available an add-on which blocks the ads showing in both search results and Google Mail.

These two came together for me recently when researching for particular types of business. Result was I had to turn the ads back on to find the companies in the market.

My question - is there any point in SEO for marketing sites with this going on?

Any light you can throw on this will be really appreciated.

Regards

Steve