Internal Links
Quick and modernized guide for the 2024 world of AI assisted content and tools.
7 min read
Welcome to the quick guide on Internal Links.
What Are Internal Links?
Internal links are hyperlinks that point to pages on the same domain. These differ from external links, which link to pages on other domains.
Internal links take various forms, including those on your homepage, and menu. Additionally, you can insert links directly within your content, referred to as contextual internal links. The hyperlink in the preceding sentence qualifies as an internal link as it directs you to a page on this website.
Outline:
Why are Internal Links Important?
Internal links play a crucial role in enhancing revenue, user engagement, and other essential user conversion metrics. By improving users' navigation on your website, they contribute to a positive user experience. Additionally, internal links have a positive impact on SEO, potentially increasing organic traffic to your site.
In the following sections, we will provide a brief overview of each benefit and guide you on easily creating internal links to harness these advantages.
Internal Links help users navigate a website
After putting in significant effort to drive a user to your page, it becomes crucial to consider their experience. If a user stumbles upon a term of interest but finds no hyperlink within the content or in the related articles section, they'll turn to an internet search or external tools like ChatGPT or Bing Chat. There is very good chance that this could divert them to another website. One hard earned customer lost!
The absence of clearly visible internal links can result in losing the user. Therefore, it's imperative to have easily accessible and relevant internal links to retain user engagement.
Internal Links Improve User Conversion
Internal links encourage users to explore more pages within your website, leading to increased time spent on site. This provides more opportunities you have to engage with them. The longer users engage with your content, the more opportunities you have to convey your message, showcase your offerings, and persuade them to convert.
Internal Links help Search Engines Index and show results on SERP
When a search engine crawls a webpage and encounters a hyperlink, the clickable text, known as the anchor text, plays a crucial role in SEO. For instance, if the anchor text includes "best digital cameras," search engines infer that the linked page is likely about digital cameras and their reviews or rankings. This is how search engines assess and determine the relevance and value of web pages about specific search queries, thus boosting your visibility and traffic.
Other Effects of Internal Links
Because of search engines' crawl budget, Internal Links determine which pages are crawled. Linking main pillar pages with sub-topic pages and vice versa can help with the site's topical authority. Similarly, they help distribute link equity around your website.
These effects are minor. To understand them in more detail, please go to the detailed guide on Internal Links.
The Transformative Influence of AI on Internal Linking
The Ease and Burden of AI-Generated Content
A surge in the use of AI content generation tools has empowered creators to generate a plethora of content effortlessly. Everyone is doing it; you should do it too but don't forget to inject a personalized touch. However, despite claims of internal link creation by some AI tools, they frequently fall short, lacking in the creation of numerous relevant connections.
AILinks: Bridging Gaps in AI-Generated Internal Links
Leveraging patent pending AI, AILinks (pronounced AI Links) goes beyond the limitations of traditional tools to realize the benefits of internal linking. It precisely extracts text segments to create hyperlinks that lead users to the most relevant articles, seamlessly connecting your content. AILinks also automatically generates related links blocks, allowing users to discover related content. Crucially, as the volume of articles continues to grow, the demand for continual updates to internal links becomes clear. AILinks effortlessly shoulders this responsibility of automatically updating internal links and keeping them current.
In essence, while AI has simplified the creation of content, it has simultaneously increased the burden of maintaining internal links. However, with tools like AILinks, AI becomes a valuable ally.
Steps to build Internal Links - Made Super Easy by AILinks
Now, we'll provide you a comprehensive guide on building internal links to unlock all the benefits. We will list what you as a site leads have to take care and what our 100% automated tool, AILinks takes care seamlessly.
Help users better navigate a website
Your users may first land on articles or special pages.
Special pages are pages such as the Home Page, Category pages, pages containing popular articles etc. As a site leader, you should decide which articles should be reachable more easily than others from these pages. This is your opportunity to impress your users with your best. There is not much a tool can do here.
On an article page however, AILinks takes care of it all. AILinks employs cutting-edge AI techniques to create contextual text links and the Related Articles blocks automatically.
By including a couple of lines of Javascript code (even into no-code website builders), AILinks automatically adds "related articles sections" and "contextual internal hyperlinks" allowing content creators and marketers to focus on creating exciting and useful content.
Needless to say, all related articles sections and almost all hyperlinks on this site are automatically inserted by AILinks. And we make it really easy to customize almost everything - colors of the hyperlinks and fonts, size, text, colors of the related post section, and how often they appear. We also allow site owners to pick and choose only desired hyperlinks.
Improve Conversions & Revenues
Let's be honest! We all bring users to our site and pages to convert them - convert them to earn revenues or support a cause. So, you are interested in increasing e-commerce transactions, ad impressions, affiliate link based purchases, donations or sign ups etc. So, you ideally want to take your user through a sales funnel or at least get them to view more pages on your site. The more time users spend on your site, the higher the chance that you will be able to convince them to convert.
There are two simple but very effective ways by which internal links help boost conversions.
A. By placing internal links "strategically".
B. By ensuring that there is a perfect internal link when the user is looking for something.
For A, you as the site owner could do one or more of the following:
Highlight and place specific links that explicitly asks users to take a favorable action. For example, you must have noticed the button just above this section where we are specifically nudging you to sign up to get automated internal links on your site.
If there is something very specific you want your viewers to read or watch, you could add them to the list of posts/articles beside the article or interspersed within the article or at the end.
You could also create a link pointing to "Popular Posts" or "Resources" in the header or the footer. This is where users tend to go once they develop a little interest in the article/site. For example, we have a link to resources in the header on this site. This section can then lead users to articles that are very likely to be useful to the user and could also guide them towards conversion. At the very least, it can keep the user on your site for longer giving you a higher chance to convert them.
The second way in which internal links can help in converting users is to ensure that a relevant internal link is readily available when the user is looking for something. This is where an AI aided tool like AILinks shines. By automatically providing related posts blocks and links in the correct context, AILinks ensures that the user never misses a required internal link.
Elevate SEO and Stand Out on SERP
When it comes to boosting SEO and securing a prominent spot on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), AILinks takes the reins in this section. It autonomously selects the most relevant articles and establishes connections through highly descriptive contextual text links. Any gaps left by text links are seamlessly filled by the Related Posts block. There's absolutely no action required from the site lead in this regard. AILinks handles it all effortlessly.
Mastering Crawl Budget and Enhancing Link Equity
One very important way in which a page gains importance in the eyes of search engines is when a reputable site points to that page. When this happens, that page is said to have acquired link equity.
Acquiring external links to the Home page may be straightforward for well-established sites, but for the majority, directing external links to specific pages is a more practical approach.
Now, all you need to do is to ensure you spread this link equity to pages that help convert the user. Follow these very simple steps to accomplish this.
Ensure each page has a link pointing to the Home page. This increases link equity to your home page thus making it important for search engines to crawl and show on SERP.
Incorporate a link to the recent posts section or page. This ensures that when the crawler visits the home page, it navigates to all recent posts, facilitating the indexing of all your content. Given that new posts often relate to existing ones, AILinks automatically establishes relevant links between them, reflecting the evolving structure of your website.
Occasionally, creating special pages to boost link equity is beneficial. Include them in a section or page labeled "Popular Posts," and have the home page link to it for increased visibility and link authority.
While many so called experts give a long list of things to do in this section, the above simple steps is absolutely sufficient to take full advantage of Internal Links.
Establishing Topical Authority
To attain topical authority, select a core topic and craft a post around it. This is typically called the pillar post. As time allows, generate articles on sub-topics and delve into even more specific sub-topics.
Once this is done, the only thing left is to link pillar posts to the sub-topic pages and vice versa. You don't have to worry about this as AILinks takes full care of this. What's more, it will even keep the links updated as you add more articles thus ensuring a cohesive and well-connected content structure.
Conclusion and Next Steps
As we wrap up, remember that internal linking for SEO is an ongoing process. It requires regular audits, updates, and adaptations to align with your evolving content strategy. Fortunately, as outlined earlier, AILinks does the heavy lifting by consistently updating contextual text links and related posts, linking them to newer and more relevant articles when needed.
By incorporating the practices and tips covered, you are on the path to establishing a more navigable, conversion-focused, and SEO-friendly website. Stay committed to these strategies for continual improvement in your site's performance.