Another edition of Rapid Fire: where we answer some regularly asked SEO questions in quick succession :).
Many users are wondering (and as with many SEO questions there are multiple answers) what to do about internal links. The reason for the confusion is because of the nature of SEO–the industry is in continual change. If you don’t keep track of changes you’ll be left behind. Case in point: how to internal link. There was a point in time when you could throw all your web links in the footer of every page and somehow that would help the rank of those pages because of the internal structure pointing to all your links in so many places (that was 2003). Times have changed, but not necessarily for the worse.
Should I change the keywords I use to internally link?
Wondering about switching up the keywords used to link internally? Say you have a few key pages/articles and you want to highlight the keywords of those pages, should you adjust the way you internally link to the page?
What you shouldn’t do is link to ALL your pages from the footer of ALL your web sites. Key documents and directories should be linked in the site map, but to do EVERY page is redundant and in fact could be detrimental. However, that doesn’t mean internal linking is bad.
It’s OK to use keywords for your internal links that point to specific pages. It’s natural to link to your pages. If you write an article referencing an idea you’ve written about before, link to it. Not only that, if you have popular articles you can switch the anchor text (keywords) you use to link to these pages. There’s no problem switching it up. There IS a problem linking to that page from every single page on the web site.
So keep that in mind, internal linking is no problem, do it in moderation, and feel free to switch up the keywords you use to link to these pages as well. Just like your external links, make it look natural.
Switching up your internal links to the same page will actually help increase the relevancy to other keywords. By help I mean by some tiny marginal amount. But it is a strategy to use.