Effective Use of Internal Linking and External Linking in Content Marketing

We know how well high-quality, engaging, and informative content can improve your lead generation and brand building.

It’s impossible to have a content marketing strategy without content, but how well you use internal linking and external linking can also have a significant impact on its performance.

Read on to learn how you can use internal linking and external linking to put your content marketing results on an upward trend.

1. Be Generous with Your Links

Generously linking out to other sites serves a variety of purposes. For starters, you are helping other webmasters rank their pages, but you are also improving the user experience for your readers who may benefit from the content you are linking out to.

Plus, webmasters will appreciate the vote in their favor and many are likely to return it by generously providing you a backlink. Reach out to anybody you link to with the information about the backlink you created and let them know how much you appreciate their content.

The more external linking you do on your site, the more backlinks you will attract, and the better your rankings will be.

Your website may also benefit from a little extra referral traffic when people click on an external link that takes them to your site. It may not be a huge flow of traffic, but it can provide a massive boost to your SEO.

2. Watch Your Footer Links

How many internal links you have on a page can improve or hamper the link juice flowing around your site. Include too many, and you are diluting to the point where links no longer improve your SEO.

The number of links you have in your footer contributes to the overall links on your page.

We’ve all seen sites with a massive number of internal links featured on the footer.

For large authority sites with huge Domain Authority, it doesn’t matter too much. However, when your site is relatively new, a footer full of links will mean you already have a ton on your new blog post before you even publish your first word.

When your site has grown and developed some authority, add as many internal links as you like while keeping the user experience in mind. But, in the beginning, moderate your usage to ensure you are not diluting the link equity of each link.

3. Take out the No-Follow Tag

When you’ve gone to the trouble to link out to a fellow webmaster’s content, make sure you take out the no-follow tag to ensure their site benefits from the link juice.

When you use a no-follow tag, you effectively block the link juice so the site can’t benefit from an extra backlink. In short, you are improving your user’s experience at the expense of the other site owner’s hard work creating content you can reference.

There are a few instances where a no-follow tag makes sense, but in general, you should leave them out as a sign of respect to other content creators.

Great content is only part of the equation in any content marketing strategy and it can be a lot to get your head around when you already have a full to-do list. Take advantage of our professional content marketing agency, and start getting the results you deserve from your online presence today.