Leveraging Your Strongest Pages through Internal Linking
Like with a backlink building campaign where we aim to get as many relevant and popular links to boost or rankings, we’ll utilize the strongest pages we have within our site to boost our homepage’s rankings.
In a strategic link building campaign the goal is to get as many links that will vouch for our keywords from as many popular and relevant sites possible. So we must try to get links from sites that are ultra relevant to ours based on their theme and keywords, as well as sites that are popular in our community based on buzz and backlinks. Because afterall, search engine rankings are based on relevance AND popularity.
Just like we would with an off page link building campaign, we’ll have to discover our most relevant and popular pages within our site and add links containing our target keywords (pointing to the homepage) to each of them.
Let’s get started.
First, let’s find my top 10 (SEO Blog-relevant) pages according to Google.
This searches my site jameseo.com for my top 10 pages for “SEO Blog”. Googles rankings are based on time, backlinks, trust, relevancy and many other factors, so the mix of sites could change. But currently my top pages are;
- jameseo.com/wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog/
- jameseo.com/plugins-i-installed-for-wordpress-seo-blog-optimization/
- jameseo.com/wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog-2
- jameseo.com/blog/san-diego/
- jameseo.com/wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog-3/
- jameseo.com/onpage-seo-title-tags-change-search-engine-rankings/
- jameseo.com/my-10-most-popular-blog-posts/
- jameseo.com/blog/james-harrison/
- jameseo.com/posterous-fw-seo-analyst-job-in-new-york-ny/
I could just do a site:jameseo.com search to find my top 10 pages overall. But for this scenario, I’m targeted the keyword “SEO Blog”.
Pages with Most Inlinks According to Google
If you sign into your Google Webmaster tools and look at your dashboard, you can see your top pages with the most inlinks. Record those URL’s as well.
- seo-resources/
- wordpress-seo-to-be-a-top-seo-blog/
- back-link-building-checklist-cheatsheet-guide-07-08/
- 6-call-attempts-for-better-lead-conversion/
- plugins-i-installed-for-wordpress-seo-blog-optimization/
- 13-search-operators-ultimate-link-building/
- flickr-seo-optimizing-your-flickr-account-photos/
- blog-commenting-search-list/
- re-directing-user-based-on-their-geo-graphical-location/
By now, you should have two lists, with some pages listed in both.
The 3rd place we’ll fetch for our best pages to leverage is in our Bing Webmaster Center.
Once you are in you website’s section, click the ‘Keywords’ tab and type in your target keyword. (In my case; seo blog.) Bing will deliver your 10 most keyword relevant pages (to your target keyword) according to their algorithm.
- http://jameseo.com/tag/seo-blog/
- http://jameseo.com/contact/
- http://jameseo.com/plugins-i-installed-for-wordpress-seo-blog-optimization/
- http://jameseo.com/blog/seo/
- http://jameseo.com/microsoft-seo-from-them-themselves/
- http://jameseo.com/title-tags-seo-samples/
- http://jameseo.com/blog-commenting-search-list/
- http://jameseo.com/6-call-attempts-for-better-lead-conversion/
- http://jameseo.com/link-building-expert-tips-backlink-reporting/
Execution
Now that I have a list of my top “SEO blog” pages, I will paste the following quote to the bottom of each post/page.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my SEO blog. I really do appreciate it. You can read another related post (found below) or subscribe here. Once again, thank you for visiting James’ SEO blog.
If you visit any of these pages, they will now have a “SEO Blog” link within each post pointing back to the homepage.
Now the majority of all the juice and SEO blog relevance my site carriers is channeled to my homepage.
Other SEO Related Blog Posts:
HI James:
For me, it all comes down to whether or not someone has deep knowledge or a great skill to go along with the great SEO and marketing programs. With that deep knowledge, people just aren't going to buy in any great quantity.
For example, AMWAY had an outstanding marketing program but few relatively speaking make money because they were all selling the same thing. Very little deep knowledge among them. Millions of people all selling the same soap.
Stetson
Nice one, I try and do similar with the realted posts plugin and it seems to do quite well.
Wow this is great, I wanted to do something simmilar and put three links in the bottom of every post to my best pages but I will look into your method, great…
Have your tried all of these? 18000 backlinks – SEO blog & “title=”CommentLuv Enabled”"
Hi..this is a great blog…I’m re-thinking what I thought I knew before reading this. Thanks for a well written piece that breaks through the fog to present a clear picture on a fascinating subject.
Thanks Wiz Kid. I try.
I've always underestimated the role of internal linking until I've read your article. Now I see that correct internal linking is as significant as off-page SEO.
Hi Kate,
I couldn’t agree with you more. But off page SEO is always most significant. Onpage you can control. So why not make the best of what you can do?
internal link building is what most webmasters forget these days. they bother with building external backlinks to their site , that they forget everything about internal linking. its best to do atleast link 40% of the pages by internal linking.