Internal linking is arguably the most
underrated SEO strategy. You don't have to ask anyone to link to you,
it's completely free with a 100% success rate, and internal links can actually
help you rank higher in Google. So today, I'm going to show you how to use
internal links to rank higher in Google. Stay tuned. [music] If you're new to SEO, internal links are
simply links from one page to another on the same website. And they're important for three main reasons. First, they help search engines like Google
discover new pages so they can be added to their index. Second, internal links help pass PageRank
around your site, effectively "powering" other pages. And if you're unfamiliar with PageRank,
it's a mathematical formula that tries to determine the "value of a page." And Google themselves have said that after
18 years, they still use PageRank to rank pages. And third, internal links help search engines
to better understand what a page is about. And they do this by looking at anchor texts
and the text that surrounds the link. So with these three things in mind -
crawlability, authority, and relevance - let's go through a few ways you can
boost your rankings with internal links. The first way is to create a logical
hierarchy in your site structure. Think of site structure as a mindmap. At the top, you'd have your homepage. Then you'd probably have main topics that
branch out from your homepage like your services page, your blog, and About page. Then from these main topics, you'd probably
have even more branches to other pages. Structure helps search engines to understand
the relationship between these pages, where branches are created using internal links. Now, this mindmap is pretty basic and
doesn't really give that much information to search engines. So let's build onto this example using an
internal linking strategy called content hubs. Content hubs are interlinked collections
of content about a similar topic. Basically, you create multiple pages on
a topic and its subtopics, then interlink between the pages. So if we zoom into the link building guide,
you might add more pages, like one about broken link building, resource page link
building, guest posting, and blogger outreach. And to create relationships between these
posts, you could link to these posts from your link building guide and also link from
your posts to your link building guide. Not only does this help to create relevance
between pages, but as each of these pages get backlinks, PageRank will flow to and from
each page within the hub, helping all of your pages rank higher in Google. We have a full video on how to create and use
content hubs, so I'll link that up in the description. Now, content hubs aren't for everyone. And if you've already created a ton of pages
without any kind of structure in mind, there are three easy and free ways you can
find internal linking opportunities. The first way is to use the "site" search
operator in Google. So let's say we wanted to add internal
links to our guide on search intent. I'll go to Google and search for site:ahrefs.com/blog
and then add the phrase, "search intent" wrapped in quotes. And now we can see all pages on our
blog that mention this phrase. So I'll click on our buyer's journey guide,
and do a find for "search intent." And it looks like it's unlinked, so it could be
a perfectly good place to add an internal link. The second way is to use the Link
Opportunities report in Ahrefs' Site Audit. All you have to do is sign up for a free Ahrefs
Webmaster Tools account, verify your site, and then you can run a free website audit. After your audit is complete, head on
over to the Link Opportunities report. This report shows you internal linking opportunities
based on keywords your pages rank for. So we show the page we recommend you
link from, the keyword that's mentioned on the source page, which is also the keyword
that the target page ranks for and the page we recommend you link to. On top of that we show the context of where
the keyword appears on the source page. Now, looking at an entire site's internal
linking opportunities can be overwhelming. So let's add a target page filter to our search
intent article, since that's where we want to add internal links to. Hit Apply, and now you'll see 23
internal linking opportunities. And unlike the Google search method, the internal
linking opportunities aren't dependent on exact match phrases. One other cool feature about this report
is that we only show internal linking opportunities where the source page
isn't already linking to the target page. So you'll find the suggestions
to be quite good. If you're new to Site Audit, we have a full video
on our free SEO tool called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, so I'll link that up in the description. The last method is to look at your
site's power pages. Naturally, some pages will earn
more links than others. So they have more so-called "authority" they
can pass to other pages on your website. Again, if you have an Ahrefs Webmaster
Tools account, you can do this for free. Just go to Site Explorer and enter your domain. Then go to the Best by links report. Here, you'll see the pages on your site ordered
by URL Rating, which represents the overall strength of a page's backlink profile. Just skim through your pages and see if
there are any relevant pages where you'd want to link from. Now, whichever method you decide to use,
the most important thing to remember is that you don't need to force internal links. So I wouldn't bother linking from
irrelevant pages. And that also means that you don't
need to overdo it. Now, if you don't have any pages with link
authority, then I highly recommend watching some of our link building tutorials. Or if you're the type that prefers to learn
from case studies, then check out our 3-part series on how we built a page
designed to attract backlinks. And if you enjoyed this tutorial, then make
sure to like, share and subscribe for more actionable SEO and marketing tutorials. I'll see you in the next one.
