The way you organize the content on your site has a significant impact on how well it performs. One of the best ways to show Google crawlers and users alike that you have a wide variety of information on all kinds of related topics is to group similar content together. This signals that your brand and your web presence is larger than just a single article on a single topic; you’re an authority on your subject and you have a whole encyclopedia of content to prove it.
So, now the question is: how should you group your content? The best way to group related content is by using internal links. An internal link is simply a hyperlink on one page on your site that sends people who click on it to another page on your site. Not only does internal linking improve your content’s SEO performance, but it also makes it much easier for users of your site to find the information they’re looking for. If they’re reading your content on a particular topic, it’s a safe bet they’re interested in seeing more content on the same subject. Why not make it ridiculously simple to find?
Internal linking is one of the best ways to pull yourself out of the seemingly endless cycle of posting article after article just to keep your content visible. Cultivating a network of like content that guides your site’s users from one related piece to the next keeps every article relevant long after it was initially posted.
Internal linking in Demandwell’s SEO strategy is very straightforward. Since our strategy involves creating a page dedicated to one target keyword, then all you have to do is find all other instances of that target keyword in other SEO performance content and link them back to the dedicated page. Using keywords in your internal linking strategy in this way signals to Google that the destination URL is your primary source of content for that keyword, so it can help improve your keyword ranking for that piece of content.
By picking out older content that contains the most important pieces of info and keywords you’re trying to rank for, you can prevent that content from becoming buried under a mountain of newer content. Instead, it remains organized within a nice, interlinked group where people can continue to discover it organically.
When most people start planning a content strategy, they immediately assume they need to start a blog. A blog is certainly a great format for publishing content — a blog can help you keep content organized in one location that’s conveniently attached to your main site, and it’s one of the most convenient platforms for sharing new information with your audience.
However, a blog is far from the only format you can use to organize your content. In fact, in many cases, there are better ways to approach content organization. Your blog should be reserved for high-quality blog content that you’re sharing with your network, so it’s best to find another place for SEO performance content to live on your site. Some of our favorite examples include expanding beyond straightforward blog articles into explainers or more knowledge-dense article databases where customers can find comprehensive information.
The success of your content strategy depends on not only the quality of each piece but also on how well your roster of content is organized. You need to organize the content on your site in a way that provides a good user experience, and you need the content to be easily consumed by search engines. Internal linking is a great way to organize your SEO content while also improving the SEO performance of your web pages.
