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SEO is typically split up into two general categories, On Page Optimization, and Off Page Optimization. They are pretty self explanatory, with on page, being changes that effect the things only on your website, and off page being changes that occur off the site. I’ve already written several posts on Off Page Optimization, concerning Basic SEO, as well How to Get Links, but I figured now it was time for some tips about On Page Optimization.
One of the most important aspects of on page SEO, is inner site linking. Inner site linking, is writing links inside your posts, back to other pages on your site. Most people don’t realize how useful this can be, or they think it’s considered spammy to link to yourself, however this is an easy way to improve your site’s SEO. There are multiple reasons this is helpful, and SEO is only one of them, I will go into detail on six different reason that linking to yourself is useful, and beneficial to your site.
Maneuverability Through the Site
Sites that are hard to maneuver through, will immediately be rejected by a reader. There are many factors that can help with this, namely having a good archives setup, but if you are continually linking to yourself a few times in each post, you will allow readers to be able to find your posts easily. And you will be able to pick your best articles, as the ones you link to, thus letting your readers see your best works for a second time. This is helpful not only for readers, but also for search engines. When a Search Engine spider comes to your site, it trys to find all of your posts, the easiest route is through a sitemap. But even without a sitemap, the spider will click on all of the links on your site, if some of them are your site, then it will be able to update it’s archives of that page more frequently. The more times and the more ways a spider sees your site, the more often it will be updated, thus resulting in more search engine traffic. If you link to yourself in your posts, you help your readers and the search engine spiders find their way through your site.
Expounding on Certain Issues
Sometimes when you are writing a post on a specific issue, then you don’t have time to give all of the background. Linking to an earlier posts explaining these different parts in greater detail, will greatly help your reader. I’ve done that several times already in this post, when I wanted to give you the option for more information on a particular topic. Linking to your self allows your readers to get more information on something if they so choose.
Making Old Posts Relevant Again
After a blog post leaves the first page, it often is buried in the archives except for occasional search engine traffic. By linking to past posts, you can refresh your readers on certain issues, and most likely show them content that they probably forgot. This will allow your old posts to be read again, so they won’t just be sitting in your archives for the few people who actually check on past posts. Linking to old posts, gives more information on your new ones, and makes the old ones available again.
Extended Visits from Readers
If you are linking to several posts in each of your new posts, then this will greatly increase the amount of time your readers stay. If you are writing good articles, and linking them to your older posts, this will give them more content to read, and thus more time on your site. The longer they stay and read, the better for you, so give them more information. Make sure it’s relevant of course, you don’t want to spam them, but if the posts relate then help your reader out by giving them more information.
Increased Chance of Reader Interaction
Extended visits result in a higher chance of stumbles, links, comments… The longer readers are on your site, the more likely they will be to comment. If they stumble and link to your site it will result in more traffic, helping you even more. By linking to yourself, you are increasing the possibility of them helping you out somehow.
SEO purposes
Linking to yourself helps with the two keys of SEO, keywords, and links. Most people don’t realize this, but linking to your blog post, from another post, is a legitimate link. However, a link’s value will decrease the more times you do it on a site, so don’t over do this, but this can be very useful if used correctly. Not only is it a real link, but you get to choose the anchor text for that link. In the links to myself earlier, I chose those anchor texts, based on what I’m trying to rank for in search engines. The Anchor Text is the signpost, telling the search engine or reader what the site is about. By choosing, for example “How to Blog“ as the anchor text, that would be the search term that I would rank for. When you link to yourself, choose carefully what the anchor text is, don’t just say something like, “if you want to read my other post on this click here.” Unless you are trying to rank for the term “here.” So link to yourself, choose the Anchor Text wisely, this anchor text will be a keyword also helping your SEO, and in an easy two second trick, you just did three things to help the SEO of your site for a particular search term.
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