The importance of a solid link building campaign when promoting a website is almost always mentioned when discussing search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques. However a related topic that arises less often relates to the importance of utilising internal, as well as external, links. Internal links have numerous benefits, not only do the make the website easier to navigate (for both users and the search engine spiders that will index each page of a website), but they also help to strengthen particular pages. This article is going to look at some of the best ways to implement external linking, and also explain how these methods will prove beneficial to the website.

It has been reported that search engines place more emphasis on links that are included within the actual text of a website. When trying to strengthen a webpage then it can be a great idea to find other related pages on the website and link from the copy on these pages back to the page that is to be strengthened. This also provides the opportunity to use an appropriate keyword as the anchor text which will strengthen the website for this particular phrase.

Internal linking also provides opportunity to spread strength from one page onto other weaker pages. Often the vast majority of external links point to only one or two of the major pages on a website. By placing internal links on these strong pages linking to other weaker pages will provide these weaker pages with a boost; thus increasing their likelihood to be picked up by search engines.

Another related area that cannot be underestimated is the importance of having a sitemap that provides internal links to every page on the website. Both HTML and XML sitemaps should always be included for a couple of reasons. HTML sitemaps are primarily for visitors to the site as they provide a single page from which they can navigate to any position on a site. XML sitemaps are used to ensure that search engine spiders will crawl every single page on the site, ensuring that they are indexed and eligible to appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Overall, as I have outlined above, internal linking can be a valuable method of strengthening a website in regards to particular keywords, as well as providing a method of spreading strength throughout an entire site, rather than having it focused on one or two pages. It is important to remember that in optimizing a website a single technique like this is not intended to be used alone. Instead it is important to employ as many ethical optimisation techniques as possible to achieve the maximum results.