Dozens of different factors influence your blog’s ranking in search:
Some include:
- The number of “backlinks” pointing to your website
- Internal links leading users elsewhere on your site
- External links leading from your website to others
- How long users stay on your page and engage with it
- How fast your pages load
- How secure your site is
It’s long been known that links from established, high-quality sites to your own create a major advantage in ranking for competitive keywords. What most people don’t understand as well is that the other kinds of links – internal and external – also affect your performance.
Benefits of Internal Links
Internal links can draw users’ attention to valuable resources you’ve created in the past. Before a page begins to rank in search, linking to it from high traffic areas of your website can be the most practical way to help others make use of it.
A consistent internal linking structure also boosts your SEO. Google sees efficient internal linking as a way of making a website easier to use. Part of this effect is caused by the fact that users are more likely to remain on your site for longer periods of time if they see relevant internal links to explore.
Benefits of External Links
External links can be used by blog readers to verify important facts. This is crucial in today’s world as it becomes more and more difficult to discern trustworthy sources on many topics. As they check on your sources, your audience has the opportunity to further explore subjects of interest.
External links are a useful way to communicate with community organizations, potential business allies, and others. Any time you discuss an organization’s research, events, products, or services, it’s a wise idea to link to them. If they use analytics software, they will know about the link quickly.
Linking to external websites is useful when you can’t, or don’t wish, to duplicate assets other sources have already made available. For example, you might link to a product manual on a manufacturer’s website because it is a more comprehensive source of information than you could create in-house.
AIMG’s B2B content marketing integrates a complete linking strategy to accelerate your SEO results. Find out more by calling us today.