Links & Anchor Text
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You've likely heard this advice before: when crafting a blog post, you should
always try to include links to other relevant pages and posts on your site. This can
be beneficial for a few reasons. For starters, there's SEO value. By linking to a
page, you're telling the search engines, "Hey, this page is important." What's more,
you're letting search engines know what that page is about (via your anchor text).
In addition to providing SEO value, internal linking can help move people through
your site, creating more opportunities for them to engage with your brand and
(ideally) convert into leads and customers. Here are a few pointers for optimizing
your blog's internal links and anchor text:
Link to pages that are already ranking highly in search.
Pointing your blog's internal links to your highest-ranking pages may sound counterintuitive. After all, if those pages
are already doing well in search, shouldn't you give any extra "SEO juice" you have to your lower-performing pages?
Here's the thing though: Boosting a page from a rank of, let's say, 100 to a rank of 99 isn't going to help you much
(since the majority of clicks on search engine results pages go to the top few spots). However, if you can boost a page
from the 3rd spot to the 2nd spot, or from the 2nd spot to the coveted 1st spot, the impact of that change is going to
be much more substantial.
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