You show your CD collection to a friend. She mentions that a certain CD is her favorite. You say, “If you like that, you ought to hear this. . . . ”
It’s the same when you’re writing a post, and you realize what you’re saying ties neatly with something you wrote last week, last month, or last year. You have to link to it. Your readers deserve to hear about it.
The Value of Intra-Links
Internal links or intra-links have three key values.
- They offer readers more content on a subject they’re interested in.
- They increase your page views when readers follow them.
- When you use well-thought descriptive anchor text, they help search engines interpret the content of your blog.
Well-Thought Descriptive Anchor Text
Am I choosing for myself or for my readers? A random survey that I did shows that just about everyone could be better at anchor test. Text that says click here or this is not choosing for readers, nor is it well-thought, descriptive anchor text.
Well-thought anchor text states where the link goes so that when readers arrive, they’ll know they’re in the right place. The strongest anchor text uses keywords to show the relationship between this page and the next. The anchor text lets the reader and the search engine see the content connection–the relevancy–between the two documents.
Well-thought linking adds structure and context to how people and search engines see your blog.
Example 1: See my earlier post called “Think Before You Link,” which also talks about thinking through your link choices.
Example 2: You might also be interested in reading about using intra-links as blog promotion tools.
Intra-links draw readers further into your blog the same way they draw in search engine spiders. Readers become more involved and more a part of your blog with each link they follow. The involvement leads to a comfort-zone, a sense of belonging.
Who doesn’t want to look, when a friend says you have to see this?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
[via Aaron Matthew Wall, SEO Book]