Internal Linking

Internal Linking

Internal linking means the internal structure of your website. Think of it, as the tendons of your body, linking muscles to bones and vice versa, or like the smaller internal strands of a spider web.
There are some techniques for linking pages and blog posts together within a website. However, remember one thing, you do not have to link every page to at least one other page. If you include a plugin or program such as Google XTML Sitemaps, you can make sure pages are found within your site regardless of their connectivity. Menus are one of the most obvious forms of internal linking. Your menus structure depends on how many pages you have. Typically, this means having small menu at the top of the page beneath the header or a sidebar menu on the left or right. These contain the titles and links for the main areas on your website. A Largerst sites will include drop down sub-menus that link to smaller pages. Of course, it is possible to have sub-menus, but be conscious of making the site too complicated or labyrinthine.

In-Text Links

This is the most subtle way of linking pages and adverts into a web page. To create an internal link or hyperlink, simply highlight a relevant word. Right-click in a word document or click the chain image and then paste the target URL. You can use these within the main text or as a “see also” section at the end.

Tags and Categories

Many blogs and website building software programs allow the user to denote the category of the page or post and to add tags. Some people like Wordpress allow you to add a sidebar element which called a widget, that lists the categories and creates a tag cloud of the most popular tags.

Sitemaps

A sitemap literally provides users with a map of the whole site including pages that are not directly linked to other ones. The easiest way to do this is to install a program such as Google XTML Sitemaps or to ask your web designers to do this for you.
The sitemap will allow users to follow a spider diagram like a blueprint. They will see how each section locks into another and how pages flow into other pages.