Internal and External Links
An essential part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is thoroughly understanding the differences between internal and external links and strategically using these differences in your overall digital marketing strategy. These links are essential components of the strategic SEO plan designed to improve your ranking on the SERPs.
Internal Links versus External Links
Internal links direct the reader to another page within the website or domain. For example, a Wikipedia page about art would include internal links leading to separate Wikipedia pages about popular artists known throughout history. Menu bars, about us sections, contact us pages, etc., are additional examples of internal links.
External links, on the other hand, are links leading from one website to another. They are generally used to provide readers with access to relevant content on other websites. For instance, a Wikipedia page about a charity organization could have an external link leading to the official website of the charity organization.
Another use of such links is introducing readers to information resources for unfamiliar terms or expressions. For example, an extremely complex article about medicine will have external links for each medical term used. This helps readers better understand those terms, especially those unfamiliar with specific jargon.
In addition to this, you could also link other websites in your content to cite references for your content or share relevant information available on other websites. You could even incorporate affiliate marketing links into your content to lead your readers to that program.
External links and inbound links are like two sides of the same coin. It’s just a matter of perspective. To the website that incorporates them into its content, they are external links- plain and simple. On the contrary, the website being linked through these links treats them as inbound links. To clarify, let’s take the example of a transaction of goods between two parties. To the party selling the goods, the goods exchanged are “sales.” On the other hand, the purchasing party treats the same goods as “purchases.” Hence, two sides of the same coin!
Internal links vs External links
In short,
- Internal links are designed to lead you to the content within the same website or domain, and
- external links lead you to the content on another website or domain.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) through Internal & External Links
Internal and external links are two of the most critical components of an SEO strategy. Adding them to your SEO plan could do wonders for your website. Read on to learn how to get the most out of them regarding strategic SEO planning.
External Links: An absolute necessity for building your website’s visibility
External links take you to another website to check out additional information about the content these links were included in. They play a significant role in enhancing your website’s traffic. They also serve as an essential element of Google’s search engine algorithm. Thus, incorporating your website’s address into another website can be a blessing or a curse.
This is because the quantity and quality of the external links are crucial to your website’s existence. While external links from well-known, authentic, and trusted websites can do wonders for your site, links from low-quality websites could destroy it. Therefore, even though external links are important, be mindful of their origin.
You can invite external or inbound links to your website by improving the quality of your website’s content. Adding relevant, engaging, and informative content would go a long way in motivating others to link your content to their websites. You could even launch an outreach program proposing publishing guest posts on other websites sharing your niche. In return, those websites would do the same or link your website in their content.
However, this isn’t the only way to invite external links to your website. You could also request the concerned webmasters to add your website’s link to their content. Another alternative approach would be to add link-embedded infographics using HTML codes. These infographics could then be copied and applied to other websites that share your niche.
External links are more beneficial to your readers than they are to you.
External links can be pretty helpful to your readers since they can use them to check out relevant content on other websites. However, they won’t offer much about the strategic SEO value of your website. Therefore, the only party benefitting from them in terms of SEO is the website your external links lead to. You should keep this in mind when adding them to your content.
Internal links can go a long way in helping you build your SEO
Internal links come with numerous SEO-related benefits. These are the links leading to other sections of your website. Spreading them across your website helps web crawlers explore as many sections of your website as possible within a single visit. Web crawlers, bots, or spiders are the programs that search engines use to copy and index the information on websites and blogs. The process is called crawling, and it is done regularly to keep search engines updated on the latest website additions.
Although you can choose not to use internal links on your website, it is not a wise idea. While search engines can figure it out by themselves, it could take them months to reach your page. This is because they deal with millions of newly added webpages daily. Their crawlers are already too busy. Internal links would help them discover your pages within minutes if not seconds.
Internal links are one of the key components of your website’s structure. A logical linking structure is of the utmost importance for a website and effectively improves its performance. Not only does it improve its visual appeal and organize the website’s content, but it also provides easy and quick access to information. A concise menu, common page elements, and natural links across your website significantly boost your traffic. This, in turn, helps readers and search engines discover your website’s content.
Importance of broken links & why they must be fixed
Broken links can bring your SEO score down to a considerable extent. The links that no longer serve the purpose they were generated for are called broken links. Links are digital addresses that lead to specific destinations, i.e., a website, a page, a post, or a blog. There could be multiple explanations for their ineffectiveness. Either the website they lead to is unavailable, offline, or damaged, or the specific page has been moved. Even though a single broken link or two won’t cause much damage to your SEO rankings, having multiple broken links will be severely detrimental to them.
No matter how huge of an impact they may have on search traffic, poor reading experience and reduced website traffic are direct results of broken links. Therefore, the best course of action for enhancing your website’s performance is to locate these broken links and repair them.
Links are just the beginning
Search engines use their algorithms to decide where to place your website on the SERP. Many SEO experts have estimated the key elements of all search engines to be around 100 to 200 in number. Google and several other search engines run their algorithms to assess your website’s position on every single one of the SERPs. Although the internal and external links may seem insignificant on the surface, their existence is vital to this process. One needs to look at the bigger picture to get a clear view of the significance held by them.
Building your links and fixing the broken ones, if any, can be time-consuming. However, the resultant boost in your website’s traffic and placement on the SERPs makes it worthwhile.
