Using Your Website Navigation To Improve Link Reputation

by Ms. Liz on February 17, 2011

Unlike backlinks that you have to work at getting from other websites, using your own site’s navigation to improve your link reputation is something you have a lot more control over.

Since we know that the search engines use text links to help them determine what each page of your website is about, you will need to look closely at the words in the text links that point to the pages of your site.

The search engines use these text links to help them determine what each page of your website is known for, so using a contextual link that has a relevant keyword phrase for its destination page will boost the importance of that page for that keyword.

So, for example if you are linking from page A to page B to help page B rank for ‘weight loss tips’, you will need to put ‘weight loss tips’ as the anchor text of the link on page A as shown in this example:

Using these <a href=”http://www.sitename.com/weight-loss-tips.html”>weight loss tips</a> are a great start to taking off those pounds.

Of course the ‘weight loss tips’ page itself will also need to use good on-page keyword optimization for maximum link benefit meaning that the keywords you choose need to reflect the keywords you want to rank well for in the search engines.

Obviously using ‘click here’ as your anchor text won’t do much for helping you rank well for any specific keyword phrase. You’ll be sending link juice to a page without telling the search engines what topic the page is relevant to, the benefit is wasted.

Using a good keyword research tool helps you gather the phrases that people are actually searching on and will help you find the variations of words.

For instance, the word ‘lose’ has several variations, lose, loss and losing, so researching weight loss tips might turn up phrases like:

tips for losing weight
weight loss tips
tips for how to lose weight
lose weight tips
losing weight tips

Using each of those variations reveals a full range of search terms that using just one variation might miss.

Types of Navigation to Improve your Link Reputation

There are actually two types of web site navigation, global and content. Both can help with improving link reputation.

Global navigation are the links you find in your sidebar, header or footer. They’re global because these are links found on every page of your website or blog.

Content links are the links contained within your content that points to other pages on your site.

The search engines give a little morevalue to links contained in the content of your pages versus the links in your navigation, header or footer. So linking to your other website pages within the content on your website gives you a bit more of an edge when it comes to improving link reputation.

But don’t simply add anchor text links just anywhere. The anchor text link needs to fit the context of the article or post. If you’re not sure the link fits the context, try adding new content and use the link there.

Use Keyword Variations

Use relevant keyword variations to help improve your global navigation.

In global navigation, typically you will use a core term as the text for that link. This can help boost the page’s link reputation for that core term because you are linking to it from a lot of different pages. That’s great for the core term, but it doesn’t help with the other keyword variations that are important for that page’s overall profile.

One way to utilize keywords is to use different variations of the core term in the header or footer pages. In other words don’t use the exact same footer or header text links that you are using in your global navigation.

Going back to our weight loss tips example, you might use ‘weight loss tips’ in the sidebar navigation and ‘losing weight tips’ in your footer. Now your weight loss tips page has some variation which helps improve the overall keyword integrity for the page.

Using Breadcrumb Navigation to Further Improve Link Reputation

Breadcrumb navigation are the links you see at the top of a web page that shows the path of how the user got where they are.

The benefit of a breadcrumb trail is that the search engines also see your breadcrumb navigation which leads them to the pages within the path to the page. It’s also of benefit to your visitors because they can trace their steps for how they got to a specific page.

Most website builders worth their salt will include the option for creating breadcrumb navigation. If you are using a blogging software like WordPress, it also features a breadcrumb trail option, however if your WordPress blog doesn’t have a breadcrumb trail you can install the WordPress Breadcrumb plugin here.

Of course improving your website navigation is just the beginning, getting quality links coming into your website will complete the cycle of improving link reputation, but your own site navigation will give you a pretty good foundation.

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Tagged as: seo/sem

{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }

Jym from Better Blog SEO Twitter: JymTarrant February 17, 2011 at 5:32 pm: Hey Liz,

Great article again! This is a really comprehensive guide to intralinking within your own site. Love the mention of keywords in the anchor text – all to often people forget this and simply link to ‘my last post’ or similar.

The other benefit to doing this effectively, along with SEO advantages, is that you will offer your readers more opportunities to find relevant content within your site, thus sharing more value and reducing your bounce rate.

Also worth a mention, the recently released ‘Wordpress SEO’ plugin incorporates the code from the ‘breadcrumbs’ plugin (amongst other things) so you won’t need to run both.

Thanks for sharing this excellent breakdown on this topic!
Vivek Parmar Twitter: techvivekparmar February 17, 2011 at 5:54 pm: great tips.
Having a perfect navigation will help search engine bots to crawl your site easily.
You have to be careful while using breadcrumbs because if you are using multiple categories then it becomes a problem for you. You have to select only single category
Ms. Liz February 17, 2011 at 5:57 pm: Hey Jym ahh …thanks for the info on the Wordpress breadcrumb trail. That’s good information
Oliver Tausend Twitter: luckyoliver70 February 18, 2011 at 5:48 am: Hi Liz,

a wealth of information I haven’t been aware of so far in its entirety. While I knew that generic anchor text links like “click here” are no good, I have never heard of breadcrumb navigation.

So thanks for sharing, interesting and useful post.

Take care

Oliver
Ms. Liz February 18, 2011 at 7:31 am: Hi Oliver, yes, your breadcrumb is directly underneath your blog post, next to the date. I think you probably knew about the breadcrumb trail you just hadn’t heard it called that It typically included your home page/category/post name
Dana from Cell Phone Reviews Twitter: danalingga February 18, 2011 at 7:46 am: I call this tip as on-page SEO. Yeah, it is the easiest way to rank high for certain targeted keyword in my opinion since we fully control which keyword that we use to link.
Mavis Nong from Attraction Marketing Twitter: GrowOnlineBiz February 18, 2011 at 11:34 am: Hey Liz,

Wow, this is fantastic information to improve inter-linking on your own site. I like what you said about using targeted keywords, you’re in total control.

Thanks for sharing your insights.

All the best,
Mavis
Ms. Liz February 18, 2011 at 1:11 pm: Hi Mavis, Using SEO On page techniques and website navigation is one of my favorite things, probably because I am in more control. We all like that
Hector Cuevas February 19, 2011 at 6:09 pm: I didn’t understand keyword variations for a long time, but it really does help your site get more search engine traffic. Google doesn’t want to see you site filled with just one keyword; it looks fishy, they want to see that your site also has relevant information.

This is a great post
thanks for sharing

Hector
Ms. Liz February 19, 2011 at 7:00 pm: Hi Hector, good to hear from you. Keyword search variations do help, just be careful not to overuse keywords and the keywords you use must be relevant. Thanks for your feedback
Jim February 19, 2011 at 8:07 pm: Hi Ms Liz,
You are a diamond in the rough.
I spent this last week with one scam after the other, I had my credit used by someone I paid 4.95 to join their online business.
I have found a few and I will send them to you. It is so hard to see so many cons in one place.

Best wishes,
Jim Bateman
Ms. Liz February 20, 2011 at 12:52 pm: Hi Jim, So sorry to hear that I’m afraid as the internet grows we’ll be seeing more and more of this sort of thing. It’s really unfortunate.
Devesh from How To Bog Twitter: tnsblog February 21, 2011 at 7:38 am: Great article liz. Awesome guide to improve int linking.

Breadcrumbs is great way to increase inter linking.

Thanks for sharing this awesome guide with us. Have a great day.

PS. Link to Bradcrumbs plugin is broken.

~Dev
Ms. Liz February 21, 2011 at 9:27 am: Hey Devesh, thanks for the heads up on the broken link. Fixed
Ian Belanger from Network Marketing Success Twitter: MrIanBelanger February 21, 2011 at 12:52 pm: Hi Liz,

Like Oliver said you have a wealth of excellent information here. I am still learning about internal linking on my blog and this post will really help me to better optimize my site for SEO purposes.

Thank you for sharing Liz and have a great day!
Ms. Liz February 21, 2011 at 1:15 pm: Hey Ian, I’m so glad it will help you. Where relevant remember to reference other blog posts with keyword text links and you’ll do fine
Ms. Liz February 22, 2011 at 1:23 pm: Thanks Susanna, You’re awesome for saying so. Thanks for your great feedback too
usanna Hess from SInternet Video Marketing February 22, 2011 at 1:01 pm: Value packed post Liz!

I love the detail you just went into. You put it all together in a workable, and easy to understand fashion.

I’m really enjoying your posts.

Susanna
seo February 23, 2011 at 4:41 pm: Using backlink analysis and competitor analysis are always the best approaches to improve rankings. One should not forget the importance of blog comments, which will provide you with instant results and improve the page rankings with in a short period of time.
Marcus Baker from network marketing internet business Twitter: marcus_baker February 26, 2011 at 11:56 pm: Hi Liz,

I have to say I did not know anything about breadcrumb navigation so that was very useful information for me. Thank you.

!~Marcus
General Contractor Twitter: savitara February 28, 2011 at 11:49 pm: liz,
your site is full of useful information, that keep me jumping from one article to other.
some people suggest that ‘do follow links’ and ‘do not follow links’ matters; while others say it does not matter if comes from pr9 sites blogs.
few of the pr9 blogs are open for comments with backlinks, but they have do not follow html code.
does it matter? or link is a link – it helps?
Thanks.
S.A.M March 1, 2011 at 1:05 pm: Hi Ms.Liz
I saw your web site and I need to guide me to creat a online business.
Best Regards
Ms. Liz March 1, 2011 at 1:18 pm: Hi Sam, Here’s a page of where to start. If you have questions post them on our internet home business forum and I’ll answer them for you
Richard from Web Design Leeds March 4, 2011 at 5:36 am: Good tips. I think that one big thing which can often make a difference in your link structure is if you replace your “Home” link with one which includes your site’s major keyphrase. The nature of most navigations is that the “home” link tells search engines that the word “home” is the most important thing on the homepage, and that link is used on every page of the site.

That said, it’s hard to do such a thing without damaging your site’s usability – which is arguably more important than SEO.
Ms. Liz March 4, 2011 at 9:06 am: Richard, I agree. I’ve use that method on many of my sites and it’s also an effective optimization tip. Thanks for your feedback
ily from lfree games March 11, 2011 at 10:44 am: Hi, I read your blog from time to time and I own a similar one. Was just curious if you get a lot of spam. If so, how do you stop it? Any plug-in or anything you can suggest? I get so much lately it’s driving me crazy so any support is very much appreciated.
Ms. Liz March 11, 2011 at 2:32 pm: Lily, Try using the GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin. It adds a client side generated checkbox to the comment form requesting the user click it to prove they are not a spammer.

I haven’t yet installed it on this blog, but I have it on my other blogs. Hope that helps
Random english June 3, 2011 at 10:33 pm: Great topic and info, Thanks for sharing with us.