Internal Linking & Website Structures for SEO
WHY INTERNAL LINKING?
With all the hype with inbound links, one tends to forget that a website’s internal linking structure also plays a big part in high SERPs placement. This is due to the nature of how page ranking is distributed by google’s search algorithm. For a better understanding, one can imagine each page as being a bucket full of water (page rank). Some buckets are empty and some are full or half full, by linking different buckets together, the water can flow from the full bucket to empty ones and eventually each bucket would have an evenly distributed amount of water.
Below are a summary of other reasons for having a good internal linking structure:
1. Increase website spidering index range.
2. Building relevancy of pages via keyword linking
3. To increase page rank of internal pages
4. Increase user experience and overall website navigation and usability.
WAYS TO IMPROVE INTERNAL LINKING STRUCTURE
There are several ways to improve our current internal linking structure, and most have already been covered. These include adding footer text links, adding related tags clouds to article pages, having recently viewed links on navigation panels as well as having bread crumbs trial on certain websites.That being said, the method being discussed now have yet to be covered and has only been seen very few websites on the Internet.
In-text Automated linking structure for articles page
The proposed in-text automated linking structure is a simple way to improve our internal linking structure as well as help users navigate throughout our website without must thought. It will increase page relevancy to specific keywords as well as decrease the use of meaningless complex tag clouds on every page.In-text automated linking is a system that automatically inserts links onto keyword within a article from a restricted array of tags selected by the author of that article. These links will be directed to a page where more links are generated which relate to that specific keyword. This function is much like the behaviour of a tag in a tag cloud, however they are not placed in a meaningless bunch of words, but are instead placed within a keyword rich article with relevant topics.
This type of linking structure allows us to continue with the way we add articles and will not disrupt the current systematically flow of events. As the automated name suggests, it will be able to run without much (if any) user intervention.
Problems with the In-text automated linking system
As with all ideas, there are several problems which must be addressed before it can be considered for a full production website.Below is a list of problems that may affect the functionality of the system:
1. Increased server loading time
2. Messy layout of article with increased links
3. Keyword stuffing and spamming of anchor text
4. Development issues
Solutions for proposed problems
Here are some solutions that we could take to prevent the above problems1. Increased server loading time
As our website increase in size, so does the number of keyword tags we have as well as article views per second. Adding a system that would need to be continuously executed each and every time an article is viewed would cause increased server load and eventually crash the system.To over come this, we can restrict the number of keywords to search for within an article to 5 – 10 keywords. Adding to this, we can incorporate server caches so that pages will only be needed to be loaded ONCE, until it gets updated again in the future. The cache will request that DNS servers as well as ISP servers keep the cache for a certain period of time, or alternatively our site can request that the page will only be updated if we update our website.
Not only would the server cache help decrease the load of the in-text automated linking system, it will decrease the load for the whole website in general.
2. Messy layout of article with increased links
If an article which contains a large amount of the same keyword, then those keywords would all be linked causing the article to look like a spam article.To overcome this problem, we can limit the number of links per keywords to 2-3, each keyword which occur close to each other will be omitted and the first keyword within that group will inserted with a link instead. This also decreases server load by limiting the number of link inserts per article to a maximum insert cycle of 30.
3. Keyword stuffing and spamming of anchor text
Much like the previous point, however this should not be of concern, as we are not maximising the number of keywords, we are merely adding some links to an article. It is also best to not always include a tag cloud in every page as that changes how specific a page can be to a topic.4. Development issues
Adding this system may change the internal core structure of the current system and hence compromise the work of the developers.This may hold true if we were to insert this code directly into the core system of the website, however, what we can do is develop a class (module) and attach it to the current system without changing codes of the current system. This also ensures that each developer can work separately without clashing in development, and can eventually combine their work after it has been completed. Testing can be conducted on a development server before launch to check server load.