internal linking strategy

Hi,
I am trying to use some internal linking to boost rankings and was wondering what experience others have with it and what are the best practices. I know it is trial and error but would be good to hear what you guys think.
So far i did 4-6 internal links to the most important category pages. Nothing happened yet. Shall i build more links to these pages, or shall i try to build few links to the existing links?
Thanks
 
Thanks. I meant I am linking from product description back to the category page. I read at few places that it can work. It is useful for visitors too as if they read the description they can click back to the category or if the landing page was the product page itself they can find the category page easier... I have about 350 products across 30 categories
 
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I always advise to link to the most important/relevant pages. Ultimately internal linking is done for a better user experience; if your website has a good user experience it will start to move up the rankings (I have found).

I'd initially focus on linking to pages such as 'about us' 'contact us' etc and then progress onto your most popular products from blog articles and other areas of the site.
 
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Thanks. I meant I am linking from product description back to the category page. I read at few places that it can work. It is useful for visitors too as if they read the description they can click back to the category or if the landing page was the product page itself they can find the category page easier... I have about 350 products across 30 categories

All products should link back to the relevant category, otherwise how do I get to the category page when I land on a product?
 
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Z

ZeroDouble

You should internal link for both SEO and User experience. If you don't, then you're just making life much harder for yourself than it needs to be.

Internal linking for SEO purposes is very powerful, as long as you know how to build thematic relevance and share the juice around correctly. Not saying that anyone here does, but internal linking willy nilly because you think that it creates a good user experience doesn't mean that google will think the same. It's just a robot that reads the ranking signals as best it can.

TBH though, if you know what you're doing then the two go hand in hand, and like most things onpage, what's good for seo is good for the user anyway. Just the same as correctly optimising your pages for SEO....
 
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All products should link back to the relevant category, otherwise how do I get to the category page when I land on a product?
Yes of course they link back, the normal ecommerce way.... Just trying to add more links back to the category page from the product description... to see if it has any user and SEO benefits? Lets be honest who is going to read a 300-500 words product description? Who does read it it would be helpful to link back to the main category for sure...as because of the google shopping ads we have lots of products as landing pages now. So the original question is that it would help rankings too? I can see the point that if it is user friendly then google will like it too. Was just looking for someone who had done it with success in terms of rankings. The reason i started with low amount of links is that wanted to be careful. So if I have 20 products in a category would not want to link back right away from every single product to the category page.
I have chosen a category now and adding a link back to it from product pages every week to see if it will help. Still anyone with any experience in this?
Thanks
 
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boring-friday

Yes of course they link back, the normal ecommerce way.... Just trying to add more links back to the category page from the product description... to see if it has any user and SEO benefits? Lets be honest who is going to read a 300-500 words product description? Who does read it it would be helpful to link back to the main category for sure...as because of the google shopping ads we have lots of products as landing pages now. So the original question is that it would help rankings too? I can see the point that if it is user friendly then google will like it too. Was just looking for someone who had done it with success in terms of rankings. The reason i started with low amount of links is that wanted to be careful. So if I have 20 products in a category would not want to link back right away from every single product to the category page.
I have chosen a category now and adding a link back to it from product pages every week to see if it will help. Still anyone with any experience in this?
Thanks

Yeah I do the same, its just standard silo structure, categories link to products,products link to categories. I send most offsite links to the category page which passes the link juice down to the product,
I also get longgggg 2-3000 word articles written and send offsite links to them which link to the product pages and categories.
You have 30 categories though, really too much can't you use some as sub categories?

edit: you don't really have to worry about drip feeding onsite links, 1 a week is way too slow, few a day will be fine just use different anchor text
 
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Okay so started with 5 links from product description, adding links back to the category pages. Different anchor texts every time. Managed to shift keywords from bottom of second page to top of second page, then added few more links and the rankings dropped 3-5 positions! That is the only thing i have done to those category pages... so could it be the links affecting the rankings negatively? Never thought they would but hey these days you never know how google will react to the slightest changes on your pages... Any thoughts please?!
 
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boring-friday

Just normal bouncing around while google reevaluates your page with the new links, should come back up. Just make sure you got your meta description written well, user experience always seems to come into play once you hit the top of page 2/bottom of page one.
I've sent loads of strong links to medium-hard comp keywords and they don't move past 11-15 for a while, like googles saying 'oh this guy has a strong page, we'll send him a few impressions while we evaluate click through rate and user experience
 
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Okay so started with 5 links from product description, adding links back to the category pages.

You're really messing with the natural hierarchy of your website by doing this. Assuming that your product descriptions are directly linked through your category pages and your category pages are linked from either your main menu, sub-menus and/or a hub page, the linking you are placing on the product pages is unnecessary.

If you are going to link to anything from a product page, make it a further, relevant information page or a relevant product in the same theme. Linking back to the category that it links from, with anchor text, has no benefit.
 
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ZeroDouble

Would the additional anchor text links back to the category pages not help to create relevance and instruct googlebot to rank you for those terms when it follows them (even if pagerank supposedly isn't passed through them)?
 
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Would the additional anchor text links back to the category pages not help to create relevance and instruct googlebot to rank you for those terms

Wouldn't that be awesome! :) And easy to manipulate.
My thinking on this is, that the 'relevance' is contained in the text of the product description already and simply linking a snippet of that text back to a page that it is already linked to, is superfluous. If you were to add text to the product description which makes it relevant to the category page (purely for linking purposes), it's very likely going to dilute the 'relevance' of the product page title and content.
 
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ZeroDouble

Wouldn't that be awesome! :) And easy to manipulate.
My thinking on this is, that the 'relevance' is contained in the text of the product description already and simply linking a snippet of that text back to a page that it is already linked to, is superfluous. If you were to add text to the product description which makes it relevant to the category page (purely for linking purposes), it's very likely going to dilute the 'relevance' of the product page title and content.

I probably wouldn't go so far as to call it awesome, but yes, internal linking is an extremely easy way to manipulate rankings. :)

Anyway, I see what you're saying, but I disagree to a certain extent.

Adding a few (carefully chosen) words in the middle of the description on a product page for linking purposes back to the category page wouldn't likely dilute anything IMO. The product page should be relevant to the category that its in anyway, and an anchor text link will (in my experience / testing) help your category page rank for the terms contained within the anchor.

Also, and maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but if you follow your statement through to its conclusion, then because all of your category pages are (normally) contained / linked to from within the main nav menu, then any internal anchor text links from any page on the site to a category page wouldn't achieve anything either as they'd also be superfluous?
 
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Also, and maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but if you follow your statement through to its conclusion, then because all of your category pages are (normally) contained / linked to from within the main nav menu, then any internal anchor text links from any page on the site to a category page wouldn't achieve anything either as they'd also be superfluous?

I'm only referring to anchor text linking from product to category. It's the structure (hierarchy) that I like to keep as 'one way'. There is nothing better than anchor text and links from home page or hub, to category, to product as part of your internal linking strategy. There has been a lot written about linking back to category pages (other than by menu or breadcrumb), both for and against. My experience is that it's unnecessary, to achieve ranking for both products and categories. That said, I'm happy to test the theory on an active site that I'm about to add some new products to.
 
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ZeroDouble

I'm only referring to anchor text linking from product to category. It's the structure (hierarchy) that I like to keep as 'one way'. There is nothing better than anchor text and links from home page or hub, to category, to product as part of your internal linking strategy. There has been a lot written about linking back to category pages (other than by menu or breadcrumb), both for and against. My experience is that it's unnecessary, to achieve ranking for both products and categories. That said, I'm happy to test the theory on an active site that I'm about to add some new products to.

Ahh ok, that makes more sense then. To be fair (as you said) there's plenty of others who would also agree with your 'one way' hierarchy system. Personally, I find it a useful way to help mop up any longtail that my category page isn't already ranking for, but I guess you can only go by your own experience of what works, and what doesn't.
 
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Valentina Howe

If you have breadcrumbs on the product pages that are also linking back to the category page under which they product is categorized then there is no point adding additional links to the same category multiple times as there will be no benefit in terms of SEO, rather control the anchor through the breadcrumbs and try to interlink the categories with each other. The more stronger your category pages will be the higher your product pages will rank automatically because it will transfer the link juice to the product pages.
 
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StevePoster

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    I am trying to use some internal linking to boost rankings and was wondering what experience others have with it and what are the best practices.

    The site pages must target different related keyword phrases according to particular page. This will expand your main website's influence to reach its targeted audience and a good way to establish your site from the users.
     
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    Just normal bouncing around while google reevaluates your page with the new links, should come back up. Just make sure you got your meta description written well, user experience always seems to come into play once you hit the top of page 2/bottom of page one.
    I've sent loads of strong links to medium-hard comp keywords and they don't move past 11-15 for a while, like googles saying 'oh this guy has a strong page, we'll send him a few impressions while we evaluate click through rate and user experience
    Thanks, so how long is the bouncing around in your experience?
     
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    Shouldn't be too long with just internal links, couple of weeks maybe. When I build a lot of links to a page they may show up in the serps in the 20s-30s then they'll drop out entirely of the top 300, few weeks later they're top 10
    cool, you were right. whatever i did the keywords dropped in the SERPs then in about 2 weeks later they started to come back on top of page 2. One main keyword just hit number 12 from 25, and that is just with internal linking. Scared to build more internal links to that page :) just wait and see where that page will be before i do anything to it again; so have to choose an other one, less important, and hit that with more internal links and lets see if that helps.
     
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    ethanmillar

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    Jan 1, 2016
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    Internal Linking not effecting directly for boosting your ranking.

    Internal linking have hidden features and that will help you to increase your website ranking, if you doing internal linking in proper way.

    You can also interlink your blog via put link on that particular blog's text (that relevant to your past post)

    Thanks
     
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    boring-friday

    These internal linking is not for boosting your rankings but to expand your site's influence to the target audience which means every pages of the site will target different aspects of related content but still related to your field.

    internal links change ranking= fact. Please stop posting this nonsense everywhere. Just copy and paste from Google in future
     
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    Andriusgr

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    Only use internal linking as a part of helping your visitor to navigate in your website. It's not internal linking that is going to increase you rankings but good costumer experience/ time spent on your site. You can also use infographics or youtube videos to increase time spent on your site and social share.
     
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    Scott@KarmaContent

    I can only speak from personal experience but I've found good internal linking can definitely improve a site's ranking. Internal linking was something I never really took much notice of before, but decided to have a detailed look at to on a couple of my sites. There was a definite boost in rankings and it is now something I pay particular attention to.

    There's too many people on here who spout the standard Google/Moz/A.N.Other SEO Expert advice without actually having tested things for themselves.
     
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    boring-friday

    Andriusgr, I'm not an expert, but I don't believe this is entirely correct. I'm pretty sure some ranking advantage can be gained by the correct use of internal linking irrespective of increased consumer experience or not.

    Can anyone else comment as I think this is an important point.
    James

    Links pass power. You get a link from the homepage of the bbc, google crawls the link and sees that the bbc is linking to you from their most important page, googles bot decides that your website must be valuable. It gives your website more power. If the link has anchor text for 'stone mason edinburgh' or the text surrounding it is about stone masons in edinburgh then google gives you even more of a bump for that search term.
    Links pass power through your own site in the same way, they tell google what the most important page is.
    Now you don't want to rank high for things like 'testimonal' but you still want the page visible so I'd make all links like that nofollow so supposedly they'll pass zero of your 'link power', like the 'contact us' etc aswell.

    You want to rank for things like 'chimney repair edinburgh' assuming that people are searching for it so on various pages you link to that with different anchor text, 'chimney repair edinburgh', 'edinburgh chimney repair' etc.

    Your website doesn't have much power in the first place though as you don't have many links pointing to any of your domain so really you need to make links. If you listen to the google guys here they think that googles going to come round your house and confiscate your website as soon as you add in 1 citation but thats really not the case. Your domain is old, I could fire up a bot and send 1000s of links to it and it would take months for google to deindex you. Obviously you don't want to do that but you need to add some. You can add in a few citations, these are white hat anyway. A new business starts up and doesn't really understand what they're doing, ignoring anything to do with seo what do they do? They go and add in citations wherever they can get their filthy hands on them.
    You can make some web 2.0s, just 'mini websites' on sites like wordpress or blogger, register them as 'chimney repair edinburgh', write a article on chimney repair and then link back to your website from it. These aren't as powerful as they used to be as everyone does it but still, google crawls 'edinburgh chimpney repair.wordpress.com', it picks up the link and bumps you up.
    You can add in a few profile links. Big sites that let you put a link in your profile. These are basically white hat too if you don't add loads. 'Hi my names James and I work at '***.co.uk'

    In all honesty though, I don't think many people are searching for it, have you checked your webmaster tools? As you seem to rank fairly well anyway with there not being much competition unless its cached results for me as I think I checked before.
     
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    Boring Friday..
    Absolutely brilliant mate thanks very much for this. The site is in the top 3 for my main keywords as I understand them, so yeah it is well placed. I know I need links. My competitors don't have many either thankfully. I am trying to figure out how to get meaningful links, but they elude me thus far.
    Thanks very much again
    James
     
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    boring-friday

    Boring Friday..
    Absolutely brilliant mate thanks very much for this. The site is in the top 3 for my main keywords as I understand them, so yeah it is well placed. I know I need links. My competitors don't have many either thankfully. I am trying to figure out how to get meaningful links, but they elude me thus far.
    Thanks very much again
    James

    you won't need to do much, add in a few of each link type I said above. Then order a blast of links to it from fiver or wherever. Google doesn't index pages that have no links pointing to them, it has no reason to so you send links to them and they index and go up in power. Because the web 2.0 is on wordpresses domain the domain basically filters out any chance of you getting penalized and acts as a buffer.
    I'd work on your meta descriptions too. when I search edinburgh stone masons I get:
    MORNINGSIDE MASONRY (Stonemasons Edinburgh) Est. 1985. Stone Repairs, Chimney Repairs, Walls Rebuilt, Lime Pointing. FREE Scaffold and Quotations!

    People don't want to click that, I don't personally know anything about stone masonry but something like:
    'Highest quality stone masons in Edinburgh, 30 years in business. Free quotes available' would be better
     
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    Thanks again Boring Friday, I really appreciate your time. I will look into this web 2.0 strategy. Have to say Im not too keen on the Fiverr idea, but I get the jist of what you mean

    I was very happy with my description until now :( ;)

    My thinking was to get the brand name, a hook "Free Scaffold", Authority "Est 1985" and some searched keywords that might get highlighted (Is that a word?) to show relevance. I have very recently changed it to this and am currently tracking differences in click thru. I will try yours in a couple of weeks as a comparison. Thanks again,
    James
     
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    StevePoster

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    Please stop posting this nonsense everywhere. Just copy and paste from Google in future

    For you its nonsense because you didn't even know the in-depth of internal linking to its target audience. You are solely focused in rankings and overlooked the most important people to be served for and that is the users. FYI you have no authority to stop me in posting.
     
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