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Many webmasters rush to get links from other sites and they forget that internal links are also very, very helpful. Google executives repeat over and over again that internal links count as much as external links. Still, many webmasters concentrate their efforts on link exchanges, or simply on buying links from other sites and they neglect the treasure at their hands – i.e. internal links.

Why Are Internal Links so Good for SEO?

Internal links are great in terms of SEO because as any other link, they are followed by Google and are counted as a vote for the page the link leads to. If your site is a high-ranking one, internal links are even more valuable.

Additionally, unlike external links, where dishonest partners will put the ‘nofollow’ attribute without telling you, thus rendering the link to almost useless for SEO purposes, with internal links there isn’t such a risk.

In any case, even if internal links weren’t good for SEO, they are vital for navigation and site’s usability as a whole, so you need to treat them right.

How Can I Use Internal Links to Get Higher PR?

One of the cutest tricks (and the best is that it is a legal one) you can do with internal links is to raise the page rank for crucial pages. For instance, let’s say you have a Products page you want to actively promote. In such case, if you put links to the Products page on every single page of your site, this will boost the number of backlinks considerably, which in turn will place it higher with search engines.

Of course, you might ask why only the Product page deserves this special treatment. Sure, nobody stops you from placing links to every single page on every single page but there is a slight risk that such a practice could be interpreted as link spamming. Well, this is not that risky, especially if you do it professionally and not in a spammy way but it is much more valuable, if you direct all your efforts to one or a few critical pages.

If we continue the above example, the Products page is a critical one because when users are searching, they will hardly search for your Disclaimer, or About Us – they are most likely to search for products and that is why you need to take care that your Products page gets special treatment. In a sense, it pays more to promote the Products page than the Disclaimer or About Us ones.

Some More Tips and Tricks about Internal Links

If you want to use internal links effectively and improve your PR, here are some more tips to consider:

• As with any link, the anchor text is very important. If you are new to SEO, you might still use “click here”, “check this” or similar anchor texts and wonder why this is not working. You need to choose your anchor text wisely. For instance, you can have the word “products” as anchor text but it is much better if you have a keyword instead (i.e. if you are selling netbooks, don’t use “products” as anchor text but use “Asus netbook”, or “MSI netbook”, or only “netbooks” because this has your keywords).
• Take advantage of both intext links and links that are present on every page (i.e. the footer or sidebars). In the above example we discussed mainly intext links (i.e. links you put into the text of your site) but you can also use internal links, which are part of the structure of the site.  For instance, have a look at the following screenshot:

All the entries in the ZDNet News & Blogs, Product Reviews, Product Blogs, etc. sections are actually links to other pages. This not only makes it easier for the user to find the stuff he or she needs but the links help for SEO purposes as well because they are from a page with a high PR and they have a keyword as an anchor text. Usually such internal links are links to sections, not separate pages but if your SEO purposes demand it, you can put a link to a separate page as well.

There are many more creative ways to put internal links to use. In any case, don’t ignore internal links – they can do a lot for your SEO success.