It is common knowledge that inbound links will boost a Web page’s ranking in search engine results, especially if the links are relevant to the topic of the page and the sites linking to it are considered to be “authority sites” by the search engines.

Authority sites, again, are defined by the fact that they appear as hubs in the network of web site inter-linkages.

But what about insite linking, i.e. linking from one page to another within the same site? Do such links have any search engine marketing benefits?

Actually, they do.

Admittedly, such links will not boost the “prestige” of the whole site vis-a-vis the search engines, as they cannot be counted as a vote of confidence from other sites in the Web community. But we believe that they may help the page you are linking to when it comes to particular search phrases.

The anchor text helps the search engine identify content

It so happens that the search engines not only look for the text on the Web page itself when they determine what the page “is about”. They also look at the anchor text of the inbound link.

So, if we link to the Pandia article Top 5 RSS readers, using the phrases RSS readers or web feed readers as the anchor text, that tells the search engines that this link leads to content relevant to such readers.

For competitive search queries this will not make much of a difference, but if you are chasing the long tail (i.e. trying to generate traffic from more obscure search queries) these links may be able to tip the scales in your favor.

If your article covers several topics you may use this link to highlight another keyword phrase than the one used in the main headline and/or the title field of that page. Make sure that the words found in the anchor text is also found in the text of the page you are linking to.

If the link is an image, make sure to use the image ALT-tag.

Link juice and crawling

An additional bonus is that such links also make it easier for the search engines to find and index your article.

Moreover, they may pass along some PageRank or link juice to that particular page.

Keeping your visitors at your site

The main reason for linking actively to your own pages has nothing to do with the search engines, though. The main reason is to keep your visitor at your site as long as possible. This increases the chances of him or her buying your product or ideas or clicking on one of your ads.

It is interesting to note that the advent of blogging seems to have led to a reduction in the number of such links. The need to publish comments and news fast, and the constant craving for fresh content, mean that many blog posts have a very short life expectancy.

You can extend that life by linking to your best articles from time to time. Following Pandia’s terminology you can turn a “sleeper” article into a “late bloomer”.

One way is to link liberally in the regular text, pointing to pages that contain an explanation for a particular term (like we did with the term “PageRank” above). Another one is to link to related articles at the end of the text, as we do below.

Search engine marketing spillovers

In our article Search engine marketing spillovers we argue that you should not only focus on the immediate effects of getting a link pointing to your site, but also on the fact that such links may lead others to discover your writing. In the long run this may lead other influential bloggers and sites to link to your article at a later time.

To use this article as an example: If one of our readers is a search engine marketing blogger that has never heard of “sleepers” and “late bloomers”, the anchor text above may trigger her curiosity. If she likes the article she may later on link to it. One such link is definitely worth the additional work of keeping track of your own content!

If you have a large site, use your site’s search engine to identify relevant content. If your site does not have its own search engine, use Google, restricting your search to your own site.

Further reading

See also our Using honey pots and sleepers to get higher search engine rankings where we argue that a successful search engine marketing strategy requires that you make use of a wide variety of web page types.

The Pandia Search Engine Marketing 101 contains general advice on search engine optimization.