Nowadays, almost every time you read a blog article you can find links pointing to other articles of the same blog. Internal linking is one of the most common strategies used by bloggers in their posts due to several reasons, which I’m going to explain in this post in order to let you know the secret behind this behavior.
Have you asked to yourself what happens with your old posts? And when I say “old” I want to refer to the posts you have published months ago… Well, let’s say that your visitors use to share your posts through social media networks, getting that post a good exposure and being a boom for some days. A week after, that post won’t be read with the same frequency which people read it in its first days with. Of course, if you do a good SEO you will attract visitors to that post through search engines, but it won’t be the same.
So there are other strategy which you can use in order to enhance the traffic of your posts, and that strategy is called Internal Linking.
The Advantages
What do you win by linking past posts? A lot! and I’m going to explain you why. If someone visits your blog for first time, you would like to make it subscribe to your blog right? Many times happens that people visit your blog and if they don’t like the first content they read, they just leave without reading anymore. If you link other related articles inside your posts, people will click all those links and this way, they will read more content of your blog.
Tip: is very important to use the attribute target=”_blank” in order to force that links to open in a new tab/window of the browser.
The problem is when you link many posts inside other ones, because the user will click all of them and then they won’t know what to read first. Sometimes that happens to me, I end with 4 or 5 articles of the same blog opened in my firefox and it could be hard to find a chronological order.
So once you learned that, let’s review the main advantages of internal linking:
- Promote your other posts.
- Make your visitors stick to your blog.
- Increase the possibility of getting new subscribers.
- Increase the number of backlinks pointing to your blog.
- Increase your ranks (pagerank, alexa…) because of the backlinks.
The Disadvantages
I think there are no disadvantages on this topic. Well yes, it is very important to remember that you should not bombard the users with plenty of internal links in your posts. As I said before, they could get bored or they couldn’t find an order among the posts you are linking, and this could end with a confused user closing all those posts that you linked. This way, you could get the opposite effect that you wanted to get which was the catch of a new subscriber…
Conclusion
Certainly linking other own articles in your posts can be a good idea to make your readers stick to your blog. Something you need to remember is to don’t bother them with several links, I suggest you to link 1 may be 2 posts and not more than that. More than 2 posts could result a negative reaction, and you don’t want to frighten your visitors 
. Any suggestions? Feel free to leave your comment and help this community to grow up!
I always forget to do internal linking with my blog posts.
I know linkning 1 or 2 blog post will help with people looking for information on that topic.
No need to scare away readers with 10 links in your blog post..
Bruno Augers last blog post..Basic Computer Lingo
i like it actually when sites have a popular posts section, or most commented section. allows me to check out older articles.
Internal linking is always helpful not just for SEO purpose and stickiness but Google likes well internally linked sites. It shows the content accessibility and such sites will be ranked better (You can see that in Google webmaster tools, they give a lot of importance to internal linking). At the same time you should not overdo it and any page should ideally have no more than 100 URLs incl internal links, ads, sidebar links,comment cites… Some search engines don’t crawl beyond 100 links.
Good post…
Cheers,
Ajith
Ajith Edasserys last blog post..Compete.com - Traffic and site analytics solution
Hi
do you have any full proof showing advantage of internal linking ??
any webmaster guidelines
There is a firefox plugin called Kaalga that helps a lot with this. I have used it for about a week now and it automatically suggest links within your post to either pages on your blog or pages on the internet.
Stephan Millers last blog post..Narrowing Down My Networks
I also forget always to do internal linking, but after reading its advantages, i will try to link to my pages….within a limit ofcourse
nasirjumanis last blog post..Two Minutes Trick: Get Rid Of Those Stupid JavaScript Prompts In StumbleUpon
Internal linking is something I do often. Why? Because of the reasons that you listed. I want to keep my old posts alive while at the same time increasing my SEO rankings. It’s worked quite well.
Sly
Sly from SlyVisions dot Coms last blog post..6 Essential Elements Every Blog Must Have
I’m not recommending using rel=”_blank” to open your own pages, since it’s annoying to me
when another site does that.
I use it only when the link points outside my site.
Using similar posts plugin works great for this advice.
Louis Liems last blog post..Overcoming Feedburner’s Ping Service Limitation
is there any plugin that makes us more easy to find past post that related with the one that we are going to write ?
revenues last blog post..How to Sell Your Written Articles
Yes, having relevant content to compliment the post is a great idea.
Search for “Related Posts” on Wordpress.org and get the plugin, makes it a simple as possible.
Matt Brians last blog post..Tightening Our Belts
@David Hey man, do you want more proofs than all those comments in addition of my word?
@Louis Hey but if you don’t use that attribute, the people could miss the reading….
@Revenue I don’t know, but I think that you need to remember what post you want to link :D.
I use the related posts plugin, it takes care of all my internal links. it’s pretty good at putting relevant links there.
Andy Baileys last blog post..I wanted to join Starfleet
I also advocate internal linking, but it needs to be said that it’s not always easy. Once you have a bunch of posts, you may not remember everything you wrote in a post just be looking at the title, so you might have to have a few windows open at different places on your blog just to find the content you’re looking for.
Also, I don’t do the _blank thing either because it just seems, well, weird to have people popping up other windows when it’s linked to the same blog. But your suggestion is interesting, and it’s another consideration I’ll have to think about.
Mitchs last blog post..Lots Of Twitter Information
Not just the readers but Goggle too….20 links per post will get them snippy
Dennis Edells last blog post..Do Advertisers Judge You By Design? What Do You Think…
I think it is a good way to make sure your new readers notice what you wrote in the past. Also, make sure you do not repeat the same keyword as anchor text too often. Try to vary it!
Ben Peis last blog post..Make Money Blogging Community Training - Part 1
I feel that you have provided the appropriate information on this topic. The benefits of the procedure are there as long as limits are maintained on the self-linking. After a certain point, there can be too much inter-linking that isn’t enjoyable to work your way through.
Armen Shirvanians last blog post..Spoken/Written Words vs. Intent
It is a good way to help your new readers notice what you wrote in the past. But we must make sure we don’t repeat the same keyword as anchor text. Google hates that!
Ben Peis last blog post..Make Money Blogging Community Training - Part 1
I make it a point to always link to my older posts. This is sometimes called link cluster which is a group of links that help to improve the credibility of a specific web page. This has been recognized by Google openly.
SEO aside, I do internal linking mainly to introduce any relevant posts within the archive that my readers could have missed earlier.
However, I’m not in the habit of forcing it to open in another tab or a new window. Probably you are right about it that I should..
Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..The Art of Writing Catchy Articles
This is a terrific idea. I’ve wondered what to do about all those old posts that fall into the archives, and are difficult to find from the front page of the blog. You also raised good points about the benefits with search engines. This is another great tip—thanks!
Minnesota Attorneys last blog post..Blog Law 101: Keeping Your Blog Legal
This was an interesting tip and like you said, I don’t think there is any disadvantage to it.
It does make your blog well connected and I think this is something that I should try out.
Series article and internal linking may work well
Busby SEO Contests last blog post..Busby SEO Test
Very important indeed. This is one of the most important yet effective ways of telling search engines that you have a decent site structure with appropriate amount of page linking. Not to mention that internal linking also helps to transfer Google PageRanks really fast
Kashifs last blog post..Back up Your Blogger|Blogspot Blogs on Hard Drive
Great post Javo,
Internal linking is essential for a blog that wants to have multiple rankings even for internal pages.
It also helps to share the pr in the site.
Rob