Introduction
Links are usually categorized based on factors like quality (high, low), source (editorial, guest blogging), and content type (image, sidebar). A common way to group them is by where a link comes from and where it points to. This metric gives birth to two types: internal or external.
In this article, we’ll look at why this distinction matters, understand the difference between internal and external links, and learn when to use each.
Internal Links: What They Are and How They Improve SEO
Internal links are designed to connect two different pages of the same website within the same domain. For instance, a link in this article that directs readers to another article on our website is internal.
More specifically, internal links are important for:
- Navigation improvement: Internal links make website navigation more effortless as they help users find relevant information faster, improving overall user experience.
- Hierarchy organization: Internal links help define a site's architecture. They highlight the most essential pages (and how they’re connected to others), which allow visitors to understand the site's hierarchy easily.
- Search Engine Optimization: Internal links help improve page authority, increase time on site, distribute link equity, improve indexation, and strengthen keyword relevance for your website.
External Links: Why They Matter and How to Use Them
External links are designed to connect two different pages of two different websites. For example, if I mention a Wikipedia article in this post, it will be an external link.
External links help to:
- Share Resources: As with internal links, external links also direct to additional information, but on external websites. This way, resources give readers explanations of important data and direct them to the source.
- Improve Trust and Authority: When you add backlinks to popular web pages, articles, or studies, you support your point of view by making it more credible and reliable.
- Foster Relationships: Linking to other sites is a great way to network and build new partnerships.
Optimize for Search Engines: external links help increase website visibility and boost rankings on search engines. More on that later.
Internal VS External Links: What's the Difference?
To understand the differences between the two, let's look at them side by side.
As you can see, at some points, external links, and at other points, internal ones win the Internal Links VS External Links battle.
Why you need both internal and external links for SEO
As we’ve seen, both internal and external links offer important SEO benefits. Let’s take a closer look at how each of them impacts website SEO in practice:
Internal Links
- Extending Link Juice: Link juice, or link equity, is the value one page can give to another via a link. Internal linking is a great strategy for extending link juice within a website and boosting rankings.
- Enhancing Web Authority: Internal links help you gain authority more easily than you think. Pages that have enough internal links have a higher chance of ranking. The point is that the pages have to be relevant and of high authority.
- Increase Time Spent on Site: When you land on a web page and find it very interesting, what happens? Chances are, you start clicking around to find other relevant resources, links, and information on the website. That’s precisely what internal links do. They encourage visitors to explore more content, which can greatly decrease the bounce rate.
- Improve Indexation: Search engines spot web pages by crawling links across the internet. So, when you add internal links, you help search engine crawlers discover and index your pages more efficiently. This can improve your site’s visibility in no time.
- Optimize for keywords: Internal links, inserted on keyword-rich anchors, can improve any SEO strategy. This helps search engines understand your pages better.
External Links
- Improve Domain Authority: Getting them from high-quality, high-authority websites can improve your site’s authority. Citing credible sources makes your website more reliable.
- Increase Traffic: External links are perfect for increasing referral traffic. When they are niche-relevant, visitors from other websites can easily become hooked on your content.
- Enhance User Satisfaction: By linking to high-quality web pages, you provide more value to readers and improve your content’s quality. This leaves users feeling satisfied, making your content more engaging and useful.
- Increase Engagement Time: Finally, just like internal links, external links also increase how long users stay on your site. This happens because your content becomes more appealing to your target audience.
Best Practices for Internal and External Linking Strategies
- Using internal and external links optimally means making navigation easier for you, your viewers, and Google. Let’s see what that looks like in practice.
- First, use internal links that are most relevant to your page’s content. So, before rushing to add one, ask yourself: what article or page would my readers want to follow up on? Then, link to pages that would help them find other related content.
- Another thing you can do is use simple, descriptive anchor texts (instead of keyword-rich ones) that clearly capture what the linked page is about. By using internal links correctly, crawlers can better understand your site. Always link to content you consider important to your site, with or without tools designed to find internal linking opportunities.
- By using internal links correctly, crawlers can better understand your site. Always link to content you consider important to your site, with or without tools designed to find internal linking opportunities.
- External links, on the other hand, prioritize credibility. When you link to trustworthy, authoritative sites, you’re saying, “I’m credible, I’m reliable.” This, in turn, is highly reflective of how well-curated your content is. Only then will your readers trust you, as they would feel your content to be well-researched and backed by evidence.
- If links are sponsored or promotional, use attributes like rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored” to communicate that to search engines. This means that the content isn’t related to your topic or niche.
- You can also make use of analysis tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to evaluate external link quality. When your outbound linking improves user value and content strategy, you hit the jackpot.
Conclusion
You don’t need to pit internal links against external ones because they belong to the same SEO team. By using both, you improve your site’s navigation, authority, user experience, and visibility.
Once you know what you’re after, use the appropriate SEO and link-building strategies to actualize that vision.
And if you want to build a stronger internal-external link structure, book a call with our team, and we’ll map out a plan that makes your vision a reality.
