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Internal Links

Internal links are hyperlinks that join the documents in your website. This is assuming you have more than one page which should be the case if you are serious about optimizing your site. As you have direct control over these internal links this is the place to start using the keywords that you are targeting in the anchor text. It is possible to beat much better PageRanked sites using a combination of internal links with relevant anchor text and good, well structured, content. Now the alert reader may be thinking after reading the section about Anchor Text that content isn't really that necessary. That's not the case. You have to consider how long a user will spend exploring your site if there is little or no content on the first page they come to. In Web marketing the jargon the site is said to not be 'sticky'. If you want to go up against content rich, highly page ranked sites you will need to use every weapon in the SEO armoury. It all counts, even if just a little.

If you already have good, keyword rich content then the obvious place to start is to make links from those keywords to relevant pages on your own site. The key for long term success is not to do anything that will adversely affect the readability or navigability of your pages. Similar rules for keyword density can be applied to anchor text density, anywhere from 1 - 20% of your keywords can be internal links. You should avoid excessive repetition of the same anchor keywords on a single page. By mixing and matching both anchor keywords and targets you can cover a number of keyword variations and target different, relevant content on your site. Do this for enough pages and you will soon have a number of relevant anchors for each page on your site. From a search engine's viewpoint your site will look like a set of content rich and well linked pages and not some kind of attempt to subvert their search algorithms. Just what they are looking for.

If you are responsible for creating new content, or mentoring the people who will then try to get into the habit of interlinking as you write. After a while this will come automatically and be much more natural. This will add value for search engines and more especially for your readers who can follow their own path through your content. One of the original aims of hypertext.

Many web authoring/site management tools, such as Microsoft Frontpage, will create standard menu bars (navigation maps) linking to subordinate pages and to the home page. These should also use consistent and relevant anchor text. Where you want text to say one thing and yet include different anchor text you can do this with an image. An example would be a site logo that appears on each page. This is done using the ALT attribute of the HTML IMG element:

The ALT attribute is indexed by all the major search engines where it is part of an anchor element. This way each page links back to the site's home page with the targeted keywords.

The focus of most websites is the home or root index page. This often has the most value to search engines, either because they index this page more frequently or because it carries the most inbound-links. As well as the standard navigational structure there are usually opportunities for deep linking into the site using keyword rich anchor text and a site map can help. A large site will cover a number of subject areas each with its own index page and similar rules apply.

TITLE Attributes

Anchor tags may also include a TITLE attribute. This should correspond to the title of the target page and may be used by the browser to pop up a 'tool-tip' style dialog with this information. It is not currently indexed by any of the search engines.

Internal Links

TITLE Attributes

See Also