Does Internal Linking Have a Big Influence on SERPS?

[Marhelper]

I have a site map on my website and I know this provides internal structure/linking.

BESIDES that, linking from one page to another with anchor text ... does it make a big difference?

[ShanghaiTours]

yes of course, a good sitemap and internal link building will help you rank higher on SERPs for sure.

[Glassjaw009]

Internal Linking does some good, but it's really one of those things that isn't going to rank your site by itself, so just link with good anchor text and be done with it, then start building off-page links.

To answer you question with a simple answer: Yes.

Hope this helped.

[rtrotter]

Google knows that the links within your site are really the only ones you have full control over. Therefore they expect you to use them to establish the reputation of your site pages. This means you should create link anchor text using the keyword/phrase you want the page to rank for in the SERP. Unlike external links, your internal links to a page can all have the same anchor text and Google will not penalize you. Also remember if you have more than one link on page A to page B, the anchor text of the first link on page A to page B is what Google uses. This is called first link priority.

The next step is to build external links that re-enforce the link reputation you have built for your page using your internal links. You have to mix up the external links so it looks natural. No more than about 65% of your external links to a page should have the same anchor text.

So, YES, internal links are very important for ranking in SERP.

Rodney

[Marhelper]

Originally Posted by rtrotter

Google knows that the links within your site are really the only ones you have full control over. Therefore they expect you to use them to establish the reputation of your site pages. This means you should create link anchor text using the keyword/phrase you want the page to rank for in the SERP. Unlike external links, your internal links to a page can all have the same anchor text and Google will not penalize you. Also remember if you have more than one link on page A to page B, the anchor text of the first link on page A to page B is what Google uses. This is called first link priority.

The next step is to build external links that re-enforce the link reputation you have built for your page using your internal links. You have to mix up the external links so it looks natural. No more than about 65% of your external links to a page should have the same anchor text.

So, YES, internal links are very important for ranking in SERP.

Rodney

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I am building my site through articles on site. Each article is linking to the next article through anchor text linking for that keyword.

[Rysk]

I spoke with the head of an SEO department the other week and he said that internal linking is far more important than what most people give it credit for.

[macanudo]

In my experience, and from what I've gleaned from others, internal linking can really help your keywords while external linking builds raw page rank which helps you show up more towards the top of the SERPs. I've gotten front page ranks solely on internal linking with particular keywords, but they were for non-money keywords. If that makes any sense

[Marhelper]

Originally Posted by macanudo

In my experience, and from what I've gleaned from others, internal linking can really help your keywords while external linking builds raw page rank which helps you show up more towards the top of the SERPs. I've gotten front page ranks solely on internal linking with particular keywords, but they were for non-money keywords. If that makes any sense

How many links to internal pages should you have on one page?

For example: If I have a 30 page site, should I just link to one other internal page?

[rtrotter]

Marhelper, if each article links to next then your links are going to get very deep and Google may not spider deep based on your own linking. You have to rely on external links to expose your deep pages. It is best to keep your linking structure fairly flat, say 3-4 deep.

Also from a PR distribution viewpoint, have levels 3 and 4 link back to home page. This will concentrate more PR on home page. Google is watching this now and considers sites with highest PR not at home page as unnatural.

In regard to number of links per page, just remember in the formula to calculate page rank, the amount of rank distributed by each link is the page's PR divided by number of links on the page. In the past using nofollow allowed you to control this but that changed recently. Now they use all links on page but only distribute PR from the followed links.

Also, in that formula, ever page has a small amount of PR just because it exist. This means you can create improved PR within your own site just by having a lot of pages pointing back to your home page. There is an old saying credited to Leslie Rohde, that the site with the most pages wins. Of course you have to make sure Google can find and index all those pages for it to work.

Rodney

[grumpyjacksa]

rtrotter...

i guess that explains why (besides the rss feed) the se's love blogs...

all pages link to category pages and tag pages - which link to individual posts...

which all link back to the home page...

the perfect pyramid structure ?

coupled with constantly growing content...

it's easy to see why it works.

pj

[rtrotter]

PJ, you got it! WP out of the box does a pretty good job.

Back when I wrote the WP plugin for the SCORE blogs in StomperNet, I targeted the PR to article pages and the system showed highest PR on the articles with lowest on home page. Since links to "money sites" were in the article text this resulted in best distribution of PR. Guess that has to change now that Google wants home page to have highest PR.