Simple Yet Powerful SEO Tactic [+ an Insider Tip From Typeform]

Internal links are still such a simple yet powerful part of SEO.

Plenty of studies show a positive correlation between internal links and page traffic.

And if you've been in SEO for a while, you'll have experienced some insane jumps in traffic after adding a few internal links.

Yet, when I audit sites—what do I consistently find? 

Lots and lots and lots of missed opportunities for the perfect internal link.

And, to be honest, it makes sense.

If you’re publishing content aggressively (often a task that’s split amongst multiple writers, managers, and freelancers) it’s easy to forget to do two simple tasks:

• Link newly published content → old content and landing pages.
• Link old content and landing pages → newly published content

For my clients, I have a clear SOP in place that encourages internal linking. 

It looks a little like this:

1. All new content published must link to 3-5 pages of relevant educational content on closely related topics and at least 1 related commercial intent page.
2. Once published, all new content must get 5 internal links pointed to it.

Often, this still isn’t enough to ensure site architecture is kept flowing and the right pages keep getting new internal links.

For that, we use the party method.

Party Method for Internal Linking | How Typeform Approach This Problem

Last year when I interviewed Jake Stainer, ex-head of growth at Typeform, he told us how they had weekly internal link parties where the team sat down and linked pages together:

“We brought some tacos into the office and just had fun. Internal linking is boring, but it works.”—Jake Stainer, Ex-Head of Growth at Typeform

Every Tuesday, they’d get the entire team together and go crazy building internal links around the site.

I love this approach.

It shows how boring yet important tasks can be made a priority by injecting some fun into the situation.

Three Quick Tips for Getting Internal Links Right

1. Prioritize important pages

If a page has more internal links, it shows Google it’s a priority. 

That means high-value pages (like a bottom-of-funnel page with lots of traffic potential) should get more links in your internal link sessions.

Think of internal link building the same way you’d build backlinks: you build them to pages you really want to rank higher.

2. Add both navigation and contextual links

Internal links in the nav bar and footer are powerful for boosting key pages, but don’t stop there. 

The correlation study linked in this newsletter introduction found that contextual (within content) links were more important for driving traffic to a page.

The best internal links come from places like a topically relevant article (e.g. “What is a survey?” links to the page “Survey Tools”) and a paragraph/sentence on that topic (e.g. a section of the article that touches on a "Survey Tools", links to the full article on that topic).

3. Mix up your anchor text but keep intent the same

A couple of years back, I found one of my junior content managers adding internal links to different pages with the same anchor text from the same article.

For example, imagine we used the phrase “make a survey” twice in the same blog post and each one linked to a different page.

This is a big no-no in my book.

Anchor text is a signal to Google of what the page is about. If you use the same descriptive anchor text for two different pages, that’s confusing to both readers and Google (especially within the same article).

You don’t have to always use exact match anchor text, but I encourage you to use closely-related variants.

Example:

Blog Post: How to Make a Survey 

Anchor text options that would work well:

• “How to make a survey”
• “Making a survey”
• “Survey making tips”
• “make your first survey”

The anchor text all has the same intent as the page it’s linking to: how to make a survey.

—Benny

P.S. My package to learn how to scale content production is still selling like wildfire and people are loving it.

Just last week someone emailed me this:

“the Scale Package is amazing btw, I've been continuously improving our content operations with it since last summer.”

Grab your copy here to get all my SOPs and a 59-page guide for building a lean, mean content operation machine.