The Ultimate Internal Backlink Definition & Guide

Just like everything, we are going to direct this content to local business owners. Everything we do here at eWebify has to do with Local.

Internal Backlink: (noun)

An internal backlink is a link that is placed on Site A and it links to Site A

This is a link to Google (FYI – This is an external link)

This is a link to eWebify’s About Us Page (FYI – This is an internal link)

No, No, No, No – You can basically link from anything to anything…

Here is a link that is an image of Steve Shows (Our Backlink Specialist). It links to an article on our site titled “What Does SEO Stand For?”

Reason #1: They allow people to access important information on the website that will ultimately help them sell themselves on the local business & in turn help them pick up the phone and call the business.

Reason #2: It gives Google the ability to scan the website and record what is on each page. These links are a huge factor that can help a website rank for the right keywords at the top of Google.

Internal backlinks are created using the same type of html hyperlink code. It always starts with a <a> and ends with a </a>. W3Schools gives a pretty good linking tutorial here.

The anchor tag for links has the href attribute. Here is the entire code for a link that says Local SEO Services and links to the home page of eWebify.

<a href=”http://www.ewebify.com”>Local SEO Services</a>.

Menu Bar Internal Links

Everyone is very familiar with menu bar internal links. These are the most common internal links on a website and for some websites they make up the majority of internal links on a website.

Footer Internal Links

These links are found at the bottom of the website. These links often include the menu bar links but often have other types of links that lead to main pages on the website. Some of these links are for privacy policy pages, company history, hiring pages, etc.

Contextual Internal Links

A common thing to do with internal links is to add them within an article. These links primarily serve to help direct people that are reading the article to other related information on the website. These links are also a great way to tell Google about specific content on your website and basically build up the backlink profile of that page.

Sidebar Links

Sidebar links are pretty common across websites. A great example of this would be the sidebar that is located in Facebook. Those links lead to profiles, group pages the person has liked, etc.

Sidebars are really common with blog types websites built on CRM platforms like WordPress or Blogger. Sidebar links are often times sitewide links because oftentimes that sidebar is the same on every page of the website.

On-page Internal Links

Did you know that you can link to various sections on the same page? Yep, this page has some of those links. Check out the table of contents box in the right sidebar or if you are reading this on a mobile phone the table of contents is at the top of the page. When you click on any of these links it jumps you to that section on the same page.

These are great ways to help your readers/website visitors navigate your website without scrolling to find what they are interested in.

If you are attempting to do your own local SEO for your company website, do not forget internal links. The link structure of your website is crucial.

Why?

Let’s just say that Google judges a page based on the types of links and the popularity of links that point to it. These links can be external links and internal links.

For the purpose of this internal link guide we are only going to talk about internal links. Each page of your website has a backlink profile. This profile shows what links point to it. It shows where the link is, what it says, etc.

Each of those links passes what many in the industry call link juice. The more link juice your page has the higher the chances that it will rank in Google.

That is the simple version.

Google Uses Internal Links To Navigate The Web

Another major reason why Google needs links is because it sends out spiders…(Software) to explore the internet and bring back information.

One of the major ways the software explores the web is via links. Based on the fancy picture I drew on my whiteboard this is how it works. (Scroll Below The Photo To Read The Story)

Mike is a Google Spider. He has been sent out for his daily creepy crawly tasks. He hits Bob’s Painting website.

The first place spider Mike lands is the home page. First he looks around and gathers words, phrases, and data to tell Google what this page is about. Next, he looks for other pages. He does this by traveling to those pages via internal links.

Mike the spider finds the contact page, the services page, and the about us page. However, because none of these pages have links to the testimonials page Mike leaves the site without ever knowing about the testimonials page.

Although most local businesses will link to the testimonials page there are many sites that have poor link structure. Many of which make it hard for Google to find all the pages of a website.

When it comes to the proper link structure for internal links you will want to think of it a lot like a pyramid. The home page of the pyramid will be at the top and the base will be created with pages that make up your long tail keyword pages or less important pages.

The pages with the most internal backlinks will most likely rank higher in Google. This of course depends on the keywords those pages are targeting and the competition for that market.

Here is a video I created for this post. It talks about how we do internal link structure for local websites.

- If you are trying to write the code for your first internal link, I would recommend visiting W3Schools. They have a bunch of easy to follow tutorials and guides and even have some easy to use try it for yourself buttons.

- Understanding the value of internal links is so important for local business owners that are trying to do SEO themselves. A good place to start would be Moz's internal link page.