By: Jeff HirzWhen most people think of link building, they think of other websites linking to theirs.
An important part of link building, whether you have an eCommerce website or informational website, is internal link building.
The idea of internal link building is linking from one page to another within your own website. Doing this properly can have a significant impact on your rankings. We take many of these practices into consideration when designing an eCommerce website.
The basics of internal link building is linking pages of specific topics to other pages with relevant content. This allows the search engines to realize your topics, group your pages and rank them appropriately. Developing an effective internal linking strategy is something that must be well planned and thought out. You do not simply want to link every keyword to the page that has to do with the specific word. Some of the tips below will help you to create an internal linking strategy, especially for an eCommerce website.
Now remember, external link building is still a big part of SEO and internal link building is not to take the place of links from outside websites. The combination of internal linking and external linking will improve your rankings and boost your website rankings.
6 ways to build internal links on your eCommerce website include:
- Brand landing pages
An easy way of link to multiple category, specifically with brand keywords in the links, is to create a brand landing page. Often this page will offer a general description of the brand, what products they offer and then link to all of the appropriate categories / products on your website that contain products by the specific brand.
- Related Items
When a visitor is on a product details page you should also be displaying related products. This will allow the search engines to index your products more easily and will also create an internal linking structure.
- View Products from This Brand
When on a details pages, let’s say for a pair of running shoes, you might want to offer your visitor other suggestions via a text link. Example: “Running shoes by Nike”. You could list out the other brands you offer for similar products. This is like related items, but more so “Related Brands”.
- Featured Items
When viewing your homepage, a category page or just about any page on your site you should be displaying featured items somewhere. Put the most searched for and most popular products in these areas. Remember, even if you’re displaying images of your products, be sure you have anchor text (text links) to the product as well that includes keywords.
- Create a Blog or Articles
As simple as this sounds, most website owners do not want to take the time to do it. Believe me, we understand, it’s time consuming… but it helps. If you blog about a certain product or about a topic, you can then link to those products or pages from your blog post.
- Create Buying Guides
These guides can act as a great source of premium content and allow you to easily feature certain products and categorized within context. It’s perfect.
The easiest way to create internal links is to look at where you have content and link from your keywords to your landing pages. Take into consideration a visitor on your website when doing this and make sure it’s not annoying. From a visitors standpoint it’s helpful and easier to navigation when keywords are linked appropriately to the page of interest. This way a user can navigation directly from the text they are reading instead of having to try and find the link to that subject within your main navigation. Also, you can learn more about link building services offered by OuterBox.
