What are Internal Links in SEO? And Why do You Need to Use Them?

(Newsletter Issue #1 - originally sent January 2023)

Hey,

This is Tyler, founder of ZeroToDigital - every month I write this email to share the lessons we learned after talking with successful businesses in New Hampshire and the surrounding regions.

Here are this week's stories, enjoy!

What are internal links in SEO? And why do you need to use them?

Internal links are text, button or image links that send users to another page on the same site instead of to an external site.

It's crucial for search engine optimization that a website utilizes internal links since Google uses them to discover new content and pages on your website.

For example, let's assume that you forget to link to a newly-built webpage from somewhere else on your site. If the page isn't located in your sitemap, and there are no internal backlinks to it, then Google won't know that it exists.

Many, if not all, websites usually do contain at least a few internal links. These tend to be in a top navigation menu pointing to pages like "Contact", "About" or "Our Services".

These links serve their purpose of redirecting users to various pages, and Google will see and crawl the pages that they link to, but they don't carry much SEO-value because they're not located in the body of the page's content - embedded within the copy that they're relevant to.

For SEO, it's best to take a high-quality webpage - one that generates the most traffic for your site - and place a few links within the body copy to other relevant pages on your website.

A strong internal linking strategy can heavily boost your SEO by spreading the credibility you've established with your high-performing pages to the low-performing pages and bringing them up to speed.

Efficiency is a timeless investment

Sometimes, the most efficient thing a business can do is not do the work, but outsource it instead. Partnering with an agency that you trust, whether it be for business, marketing, HR, or another function, is increasingly becoming a more common way for business's to maximize their budget's return on investment.

In 2021, 40% of business-to-business marketing departments said that budget issues were their #1 obstacle. To combat this, more and more are starting to outsource many marketing functions to agencies with more expertise who can perform the programs and processes more efficiently.

In 2022, companies are no longer looking to just expand their areas of expertise by hiring specialized agencies, but offload much of the in-house work as well.

According to Forrester, by 2025, it's expected that approximately 40% or more of all creative and content-related services will be performed by external agencies of a company.

Quick hitters

• A comprehensive business guide to website development
• A website traffic ranking for New Hampshire businesses
• How to get benefit from link building for SEO
• 5 signs headless e-commerce on Shopify Plus is the way to go

One last thing ...

ZeroToDigital is submerged with all things digital. We offer a suite of free and paid products. We help local businesses like yours every day with various website and digital marketing services. We also offer virtual and on-site courses, training and speaking in our academy.

Chances are that there's something we can do to help support you and the growth of your business, too!