What exactly is cross-linking?
Simply said, a cross link or internal link is one that connects two pages on your website. Cross Linking often is also called internal linking. Cross linking or Internal Linking is about how to accomplish this in a way that can help raise the rankings of a certain website or collection of pages.
If done correctly, internal linking will:
boost the relevance of your website’s pages
assist search engines in understanding your website’s structure,
offer specific pages on your website greater authority according to search engines
Every website — even Shopify online stores or websites created by Wix — consists of internal and external links. Internal links connect pages and posts on your website, and external links connect your pages to other websites.
In this post, we focus on internal links, cross-linking and what they mean for SEO.
What are internal links?
An internal link or cross link is a link that links a website to another website. Internal links are hyperlinks that point to different pages on the same website.
These differ from external links, which link to pages on other, external websites.
Here’s a sample of what its code looks like on the backend of a website:
Why Are Internal Links Important for SEO?
Internal links are an important part of SEO for three reasons:
They help search engines understand your site’s structure
They pass page authority
They help users navigate your site
Google follows links to discover content on websites and to rank this content in the search results. If a post or page gets a lot of links, this is a signal to Google that it’s an essential or high-value article. This counts for internal as well as external links.
Let’s dive into the details.
How do internal links affect SEO?
They show search engines how your site is set up
When you use internal links strategically, you signal that page A is related to page B. This helps Google figure out what your pages are about and how they connect to each other.
A good system of internal links also makes it easier for search engines to find and index your site’s pages.
“Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them,” Google says in its guide to how search works. Google finds new pages by following a link from a known page to a new page.
Here is a picture that shows how this works:
Internal links can also help show how two pages relate to each other in context.
Internal Linking passes Authority
Internal linking helps other pages on your site get more authority. Google uses an algorithm called PageRank to figure out how important a webpage is (i.e., how it ranks).
Let’s say that page A has good links from other sites that lead to it. This means that, according to PageRank, page A is more important. Through internal links, this authority can then be sent to page C.
Identifying these pages might assist you in making the most of the authority that comes into your site in order to increase rankings.
Some of your pages have more authority than others. These are pages that already have been linked to from other sites. Your home page is the best example. Links from these pages to other pages will pass more authority and SEO value. Some of your pages will benefit from a bit more authority than other pages. These are pages that may be ranking, but not that high.
They Help Users to Navigate Between Relevant Pages
Internal linking also improves the user experience (UX) of your site by making it easier for visitors to find content that is related.
Assume a person visits your website and comes on an instructional page about “how to build a Car”.
Internal links to relevant product sites with Car components or to related material, such as an article about “how to fix a Car motor,” can be included.
Your objective should be to keep customers on your site long enough for them to perform your desired activity, such as completing a purchase, filling out a form, purchasing a product, and so on.
Displaying relevant, valuable material on the appropriate pages is the ideal approach to do this.
Understanding the Different Types of Internal Links
There are several types of internal links.
Links inside your content may be included in addition to links on your homepage, menu, post feed, and so on. These are referred to as contextual links.
Contextual Links
Contextual links direct your readers to relevant and engaging content. Furthermore, they enable search engines to estimate the worth of your site’s content based on its relevance.
Contextual links (or in-text links) are usually placed in the main body content of a page.
Rather than directing users to larger navigational pages, these types of links direct them to other related content.
The links are often placed within descriptive anchor text.
Blog posts typically feature contextual links to point readers to related, relevant content and to help Google understand how your site pages relate to each other.
The greater the number of links a relevant page obtains, the more important it seems to search engines. As a result, effective internal links are critical to your SEO.
Next to the contextual links internal links further can be classified as navigational, footer or sidebar links.
Navigational Links
Because they are always visible on your main menu, navigational links are the most crucial internal connections. They also serve as the primary navigation framework for your site.
Navigational links are frequently seen in the top menu or sidebar and cover product categories, services, or key content subjects.
They are often implemented site-wide and serve the primary purpose of helping users find what they want.
Footer Links
Footer links are a type of navigation link. They appear on every page of your site, but at the bottom of the page instead of the top.
These links should point to other pages on your site that the user may want to visit.
Some common footer links are your contact us, about us, FAQ, and other reference pages.
Sidebar Links
Sidebar links are another type of navigational link that some sites use to direct users to related content.
Many news or recipe websites feature these kinds of links to encourage visitors to navigate to a related page on the same site.
How to Build Your Internal Linking Strategy
Now that you’ve covered the fundamentals, it’s time to craft your approach.
Here are four steps of Best Practices to get started:
1: Determine Your Site’s Pillar Pages
The first step is creating a list of pillar pages, which are central pages on a broad topic that link to related, more detailed sites.
Your pillar pages will assist you in developing subject clusters, which are collections of material concerning certain themes. Creating pillar pages and subject clusters will aid in the development of your site’s architecture.
Pillar pages should target broad, high-volume keywords rather than more particular long-tail keywords.
Think of your pillar page as the top of your marketing funnel—customers are curious and only looking for general details.
Just be careful not to fall into the trap of identifying too many pillar pages, or they will end up being too niche.
You can get more specific when you start coming up with topic clusters.
2: Create Topic Clusters Using Internal Links
Now that you’ve discovered your subject pillars, it’s time to create more precise topic clusters for each of them.
Consider your pillar to be the primary issue, and your clusters to be supporting, more detailed themes.
So, if your pillar page was about “blogging,” your clusters may be “What Is Blogging?” and “Blogging Tools” and “Best Blogging Websites”
Good tools to create such topics clucsters are Brainstorming or Mind Mapping Tools, for example MindMeister or MindMap Maker.
To start, map out your topic clusters and build ideas for relevant supporting pages.
If you aren’t sure how to come up with topic clusters or supporting pages, use a keyword generator like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. Plug in a general keyword like “blogging”. You can search through the results or use the left-hand column to find groups of related keywords easily.
For more ideas you could read our Guide to Organic Keyword research (which is a good example of internal linking, too).
3: Choose the Right Anchor Text
On your own website, you have complete control over the anchor text. Make a point of using terms and phrases that clearly convey the intended page subjects.
Quality anchor text assists both visitors and search engines in determining the purpose of a website before they click on it.
The clickable text in a hyperlink is known as anchor text.
Google’s algorithm can also better understand your site’s structure when you use relevant anchor text. This gives it a better idea of how different pages relate to each other.
SEO-friendly anchor text is:
Relevant: Don’t use vague anchor text like “click here” or “this weird life hack will help you lose 10 pounds a week.” Google doesn’t know what the linked page is about from either choice.
Optimized: Using exact-match anchor text for internal links probably won’t get you in trouble as long as the anchor text is relevant to the linked page. And you are not trying to over-optimize your site by using too many keywords.
Brief: Keep anchor text short so that users and search engines can understand what the page is about. We suggest that anchor text be no more than five words long.
Be careful when it comes to external links, though—manipulating external anchor text is a violation of Google’s Search Essentials guidelines.
Keeping all those best practices in mind, assign anchor text suggestions to your pillar and cluster content based on keyword research.
4: Identify Your Site’s Authority Pages
Your most important pages are linked to by high-quality backlinks, which are links from other pages.
Google looks at backlinks as a sign of trust. So if a page has a lot of votes, or backlinks, some of that authority can be passed on.
The goal is to link this authority (also called “link equity”) to other pages in a smart way.
To identify the Authority of each page you can use Moz Link Explorer.
Auditing your site’s existing internal links
Unless you’re working on an entirely new website, you probably already have some internal linking in place. Internal linking for SEO gets easier with every new post you have on your website, of course.
You need a defined internal linking strategy because it will help both Google and users navigate your site more easily. Plus, you can leverage more authoritative pages once you identify them.
Performing an internal link audit will help you build this strategy. After conducting a site audit using a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or ScreamingFrog, you are given a summary of your internal linking structure and recommendations for improving it.
An excellent tool for auditing your already existing linking is Google Search Console and its Search Console Insights Dashboard. GSC has a wonderful feature called “Links” which displays you all external and internal links. One of the easiest ways to see which of your landing pages has the most internal links is to use this feature of Google Search Console.
Pro Tip: You can also search Google for other keywords to find more relevant places from which to add internal links. For example, for our SEO guide, we may also search for: site:commander-seo.com “SEO Guide”. You could search for every occurrence of the word “link” the same way: site:commander-seo.com “link”. How To Use the Site Search Operator is a useful list of Google Search Operators made by Google themselves.
You can use this feature to see how your site’s internal links are set up.
Best Practices: I recommend doing an internal link audit ever 2 or 3 months. You will sometimes find that low-priority pages are getting a ton of internal link juice.
Especially for WordPress Users, Plugins like LinkWhisper or Internal Link Juicer may be of use since they are showing up good opportunities for internal links.
Nevertheless, I suggest avoiding Plugins which do automatically generate internal links.
Three reasons to avoid automatic link generator:
- It’s hard to be strategic: Plugins and tools add internal links without understanding which pages need the most juice. Or which pages on your site are best to link FROM.
- Anchor text spam: Depending on the size of your site, a plugin can easily create hundreds of exact match anchor text internal links overnight.
- Ignores users: Internal links aren’t just for SEO. They also help users find related content on your site.
Don’t forget to check your old Pages
Make it a habit for your SEO Strategy: Every couple of months, check your old Webpages or Blog Posts. In general, no new blog post should go live on your website without including internal links to other relevant content. No important pages should be orphaned for two reasons: Google won’t be able to find them (unless you submit your sitemap via Google Search Console, or they have backlinks from crawled pages on other sites). No PageRank will be transferred via internal links—as there are none.
If you’re not exactly sure where to link to on your website, you can leverage software tools like SearchAtlas and see the internal links suggestions it recommends to you.
Here’s how it works: First, find an old article on your site that you published at least half a year ago. Next, grab a list of pages that you published since you first published the old article.
Finally, scan the page for places where you can add an internal link to a new page.
Of course this should be a do follow link. Nofollow links use the rel=“nofollow” attribute to communicate to Google that the authority should not be passed to the linked page. SEOs will often use the nofollow attribute for outbound links to pages that they don’t want to “vote” for, but you’ll want to leave of course almost every internal link as a do follow link.
After all, you just got a handful of helpful internal links from a few minutes of work.
Internal Linking
Frequently Asked Questions
A link from one page on your website to another page on your website is an internal link. Users and search engines both use links to find what they’re looking for on your website. Users move around your site and find the content they want to find by clicking on links. Search engines use links to find their way around your site, too. If there are no links to a page, they won’t see it.
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The following are three types of internal links that should you be familiar with: contextual links, navigation links and footers.
Typically internal linking occurs when websites are linked on a similar page and external linking occurs when websites are linked on different pages. External links refer to your site’s pages and external links link to websites on another domain.
Crosslinking in SEO refers to the link between two websites. Cross linking increases the amount of links on incoming pages that have a relevant keyword. Using Crosslink in Search Engine Marketing can increase the number of visitors for certain keywords and increase referrals from other websites.
Crossing a link means inserting a link to another link of the same root domain.
Linking improve SEO. Internal as external links help identify your webpage’s value to search engines. High-end sites often link with other high-quality websites so that search engines can see your content and boost your rankings.
Links in a different web page than yours are backlinks to your web page. Crosslinking refers to a link in a website pointing to other websites in it. A cross link may be considered more beneficial than a backlink because it explains the importance of the website internal.
There are no limits to the quantity of links in the site. Having useful and related websites does not hurt the rankings for SEO. Practically speaking, lots of links isn’t always good for user experience, and limiting the number of links per page to a reasonable number (typically around 100 or less) can provide additional SEO benefits
For the most sites and pages, an average link to an article should be 20. This number may vary slightly depending on the size of your website.
Your internal link should use anchor text, but not just any anchor text will do. Include phrases that describe what the target link is about.
Because they are always on your main menu, navigational links are the most important kind of internal link. They are also the main way people get around your site. Most of the time, navigation links are in the top menu or a sidebar and cover product categories, services, or the main topics of the site’s content.
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