Optimizing Your Website
If you’re looking for a quick overview of a variety of topics to help you perform search engine optimization on your web site, keep reading. This article will cover basic issues such as internal linking and anchor text, as well as slightly more advanced items, such as why you should link out to good resources and more.In this article we discuss on-site optimization and touch on the following topics:
- Internal linking.
- Using anchor text on internal links.
- Alt tags and images as links.
- Broken links.
- URL problems.
- Usability issues – DO NOT rely on navigation.
- Building navigation.
- Linking out.
- Using no follow to sculpt page rank.
- Site maps.
Internal Linking
Internal links, just like in-bound links, are used by search engines to rank your pages. You must link to the most valuable pages from your high PR pages in order to pass Page Rank and help those pages rank.
For example, assume you have a 20 page website. Your home page has a Page Rank of 7, page A is PR5 and page B is PR6. All of your other pages are PR 0. Suppose one of the PR0 pages (let’s call it X) is optimized for a keyword for which you want to rank. To help page X rank, make sure to link with your targeted keyword from the home page (PR7), page A and page B. This way you pass their ranking power to page X, making it more likely to rank.
Keep in mind that toolbar page rank is a weak measurement since it’s not real, so another way to measure ranking power (in order to pass it to other pages) would be with links. Check the link profiles of the best ranking pages and then link from those pages with targeted keywords to the pages you want to rank on search.
Search engines rely heavily on internal linking data. Pages to which you link most frequently are the pages you tell the search engines are the most important.
