Internal vs. External Linking

Adding internal and external links to your content and your website can improve your overall SEO strategy. To understand why that is, we need to understand what exactly internal and external linking is and what the difference is. 

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Internal Linking

Internal links are hyperlinks within your content that direct you to another page on your website. Hyperlinking to your own website can improve your overall rank on any search engine. 

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Google bots are crawling your website, and Google uses internal links to discover new content on your site. Putting the right internal links on keywords can help Google learn the relevance, quality and value of your website. 

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Think of your website like a pyramid. You have the home page which houses a few sub-pages like your “About us” page or “Services” page. Those sub-pages might also have sub-pages; for example, your “About us” page might be broken down further into an “Our History” page and an “Our Mission” page. 

Using internal links on your website will not only feed bot crawlers quality content and rank you higher on search, but these links to your own site will also improve overall user experience. Proper usage of internal links will keep people engaged on your site and encourage those to become a customer. 

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External Linking

An external link is a hyperlink that directs users to a relevant page on a different website. External linking can be helpful to your website if you link to authoritative and reputable websites, and the content you are linking to MUST be relevant to the content on your page. 

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It is important to add quality and trustworthy external links to your website because it improves your credibility and authority online, too. Using external links provides valuable information to users and helps them understand how your content is relevant to what they searched on Google. 

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The websites you’re linking to can also see that your content has a hyperlink to their page, and they might even return the favor. External links create networking opportunities for new connections in digital marketing and SEO when done correctly. 

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If you are wondering how you can bump your search visibility or credibility, try using internal and external links on some of your content throughout your website. Hyperlink to quality pages using keywords, using both internal and external links, and your SEO ranking could climb. 

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