Internal Linking for Ecommerce: Best Practices to Follow

Internal linking is the cornerstone of modern SEO practices. It has an immense influence on Google’s ranking algorithms.

According to The SEO Sprint, “Tactics involved in internal linking practices can boost your website’s SEO traffic from 50% to 200%.”

If you strategically interconnect different web pages within your website, it boosts navigation and user experience and fosters a cohesive digital system.

Internal linking for eCommerce channelizes authority from high-performing pages to others and offers great website visibility.

It’s a broad SEO spectrum, so there are multiple dos and don’ts. To get an overall idea of those, read on:

Internal Linking for eCommerce: Best Practices to Follow

List your site’s hub pages:

A website hub page is a core page with a collection of comprehensive resources that acts as a gateway to various related topics and subtopics. It’s a content-rich page that links out to the other pages of your website.

Let’s explore the process of listing your website hub pages:

1. Make a list of core topics:

Review your content and track the main themes or categories that cover a broad range of topics. Now, use keyword research tools to identify high-value, high-traffic topics that are crucial to your website’s growth.

2. Create Hub Pages:

Select the main topics that will serve as hubs. These should represent broad themes or categories that encompass multiple related subtopics. Create dedicated hub pages for each of these main topics.

These pages should act as comprehensive resources that provide an overview of the topic and link out to relevant subtopics or articles.

3. Organize Subtopics:

Map out the subtopics or categories that fall under each hub. These can be specific aspects or detailed sections related to the main topic.

Develop or organize content for each subtopic, ensuring it provides depth and relevance to the overall hub topic.

4. Internal Linking Structure:

Strategically link from the hub pages to the corresponding subtopic pages. Ensure these links are contextually relevant and guide users to more detailed information.

Implement cross-linking among subtopic pages within a hub, creating a network of interconnected content.

Build topic clusters:

After listing your website’s hub pages, it’s time to develop specific topic clusters. These are groups of web pages used to establish authority over a particular subject in the eyes of search engines.

Building topic clusters for internal linking is an effective SEO strategy that organizes website content around pillar pages and related subtopics. Here’s a step-by-step process:

Identify Pillar Content:

Choose broad, high-value topics relevant to your business or industry. These will serve as the pillar content.

Develop comprehensive, in-depth content pages for each selected pillar topic. These pages should cover the topic’s main aspects broadly.

Determine Subtopics:

Use keyword research tools to identify related long-tail keywords and subtopics associated with each pillar topic.

Organize subtopics around each pillar page, creating a content map that details how subtopics relate to and support the main pillar content.

Create Subtopic Clusters:

Craft high-quality content for each subtopic. Ensure these subtopic pages delve deeper into specific aspects related to the pillar content.

Apply on-page SEO techniques to each subtopic page, including keyword optimization, internal linking, and engaging content formats.

Internal Linking Strategy:

• Link from the pillar page to the corresponding subtopic pages using relevant anchor text.
• Link back from the subtopic pages to the relevant pillar page to reinforce the thematic relationship.
• Cross-link between subtopic pages where relevant, creating a network of interconnected content within the topic cluster.

Related: Optimize Your Internal Linking Strategy for 2023

Use relevant anchor text

An anchor text refers to the visible, clickable structure in the form of a hyperlink.

• How to add anchor text:
  Content Management Systems (CMSs) like WordPress allow users to add, edit and remove anchor text HTML in a single click. It’s really simple; In WordPress, create a new post and write your content.
• After putting content, highlight the words that you want to turn down in form of anchor text.
• Go to the text formatting bar and click on the link icon.

Insert your target links in the given space, and your plain text will turn up in anchor text.

A similar procedure occurs in other CMSs, like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify.

Boost certain page rankings with authority page internal links

A healthy internal linking strategy for eCommerce offers you room for your web pages to easily rank and index. It also boosts both click-through rates and conversions simultaneously. You can easily boost your page rankings with the help of authoritative internal links.

It strategically involves linking from high-authority pages to the target page.

Here’s a step-by-step process:

Identify High-Authority Pages:

1. Use tools like Google Analytics or SEO software to identify pages with high traffic, strong backlink profiles, or high domain authority.
2. Assess the quality and relevance of these high-authority pages to ensure they align with the target page’s content.

Determine Target Page:

1. Choose the page you want to boost in the rankings. This might be a new page, a page with great content needing more visibility, or a page important for a current marketing campaign.
2. Identify areas within the high-authority page’s content where a link to the target page would naturally fit and provide value to users.
3. Choose anchor text that accurately describes the target page’s content and incorporates relevant keywords without over-optimization.

Insert Internal Links:

1. Embed internal links from the high-authority page to the target page within relevant content sections.
2. Avoid overstuffing or making the linking appear forced. Keep it natural and user-friendly.

Also Read: On-Page SEO Guide for E-commerce Websites

Internal Linking: Common Mistakes to Avoid

Don’t orphan any pages:

Orphan pages are those web pages that don’t have links from anywhere else on your website. But, you can say these pages are without links. Most of the time, orphan pages go unindexed as search engine crawlers can’t find them through the help of links.

Source: Semrush

So, orphan pages aren’t great for either crawlers or users. You can’t reach these web pages through your website’s natural structure. So, if you have posted important or useful information on those pages, it becomes irrelevant.

Simply put, it can also create a frustrating user experience, as with no internal links, no authority gets passed away through these web pages. So, search engine crawlers need a semantic or structural context to evaluate these pages properly.

How to find and resolve your site’s orphan pages:

• You have to list out your whole website.
• Run a website crawl (Amazon Bot, Bingbot, DuckDuckBot).
• Properly analyze the audit results.
• Resolve any of the orphan pages found.
• Now, you have to rerun the audit periodically to catch unlinked pages.

Don’t put links in forms that require submissions:

It would help if you didn’t add links you want to count in submittable forms (contact forms or surveys). The search engine crawlers refrain from submitting the form to track these links, thus rendering them ineffective in aiding your SEO efforts.

Don’t build a page with thousands of links:

Never expect the same results when getting links from hundreds or thousands of low-authority or spammy websites. If you build online links with low-quality websites, then it will damage your brand’s image.

Don’t forget to update internal links regularly:

With a growing and evolving website, monitoring internal links is crucial. Ensure that they’re still relevant and functional. Note that broken and outdated links can negatively impact the user experience and SEO.

Conclusion

It has an indispensable role in securing prominent Google rankings. This offers you a great ability to sculpt your site’s structure, prioritize content relevance, and distribute link equity more easily.

Unlock the full potential of your e-commerce website with the expertise of our premier eCommerce SEO agency. In the comprehensive guide on internal linking for e-commerce, we delve into the best practices to elevate your online store’s performance.

Our agency is dedicated to implementing strategic internal linking techniques tailored to the unique needs of e-commerce platforms. With a proven track record, we specialize in optimizing internal link structures, enhancing user experience, and boosting your site’s search engine rankings.

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