Optimizing Your Internal Link Structure

Writing by Nick Stamoulis ShareThis

Most of us consider optimization of links to be mostly about inbound links. While inbound links are important, they aren’t the only links that are important. You also need to optimize your internal links to prevent broken links, good traffic flow, and PR flow.

PR = PageRank, for the uninitiated.

Now, I’m not necessarily talking about your navigational menu, although that’s a good place to start. You want your links to be good, solid hypertext links, not dynamic links. For instance, those snazzy little drop-down menus on your nav bar? They don’t really help you. Sure, they look cool, but for search engine optimization purposes they are hurting you because they just won’t get crawled.

So step 1 of your link optimization strategy should be crawlability. Any links that don’t get crawled are a big ding in your search engine armor.

Also, be sure to use the proper anchor text for your internal links. That means using keywords that are appropriate for the linking page. And title attributes for your links can increase your optimization efforts as well.

When it comes to on-page optimization, don’t forget your internal links!