Internal Linking
Although this topic involves links, internal linking should not be confused with backlinks or link-building. Instead, it refers to the navigability and accessibility of a website’s own content.
Optimizing Links and Website Structure
When discussing internal linking, the focus is solely on the links and not the overall structure of the website. To clarify this distinction, let’s consider an example:
A career website has a homepage, which represents Level 1. It also has a three-tier category structure (e.g., “Jobs → IT Jobs → Backend Developer”), which represents Levels 2 to 4. While the website structure is important, Google prioritizes internal links over the hierarchical structure. Therefore, optimizing internal linking requires looking beyond the structure of the site.
Key Factor #1: Accessibility of All Content
The primary goal of internal linking is to ensure that all content on a website is accessible via internal links. Search engine crawlers like Googlebot primarily navigate websites through these internal links.
In some cases, Google might index content even if it is not internally linked. This can occur if the content is discovered through other means, such as XML sitemaps or external links. However, relying on such methods is not ideal. Internal links provide important signals to search engines for determining the relevance of content. Pages that Google finds only via XML sitemaps may lack these signals, potentially resulting in lower rankings.
To confirm that all website content is internally linked, use a crawler tool that scans the entire website and cross-references it with an XML sitemap. In practice, this is rarely a major issue, as modern content management systems (CMS) and e-commerce platforms usually handle this effectively.
Click Depth – Less Is More
Internal linking isn’t just about ensuring all content is linked; it’s also about maintaining a reasonable click depth. Click depth refers to the number of clicks required to reach a specific page from the homepage, with a minimum of one.
If click depth is too high, certain pages might become difficult for crawlers to access, and links from those pages might not be followed.
What Is an Acceptable Click Depth?
Determining an excessive click depth depends on the website’s structure and overall popularity. As a general rule, a double-digit click depth is considered too high. No website owner wants their content to go undiscovered or unindexed, regardless of its quality.
Best Practices for Managing Click Depth
To ensure optimal indexing and ranking:
- Aim for a low click depth wherever possible.
- Regularly evaluate the click depth of all content on your site.
- Use a crawler tool to visualize the click depth of every page and identify areas for improvement.
By minimizing click depth, you enhance the accessibility and search engine visibility of your site’s content, contributing to better SEO performance.