Internal links are one of the most powerful yet underutilized SEO techniques. Linking between pages on your own website provides huge benefits: driving traffic to relevant content, improving search rankings, and strengthening your site‘s authority.
In this definitive guide, you‘ll learn essential internal link building strategies to dramatically improve your WordPress site‘s performance.
Let‘s dive in!
Why Internal Links Matter for SEO
Internal links allow search engines to easily crawl and index your site. The number and quality of internal links signals to Google that pages are related and useful to visitors.
In addition to SEO benefits like lower bounce rates and more indexed pages, internal links provide valuable navigation for users. Readers can seamlessly discover more of your content.
Some key advantages of quality internal linking:
- Increased site search traffic and lower bounce rates
- Conveys Google relevancy between connected pages
- Distributes authority (PageRank) to deeper linked pages
- Provides better user experience by linking related content
Now let‘s explore specific strategies to build better internal link structures.
How to Manually Create Quality Internal Links
The first step is understanding exactly where and how to manually place effective internal links in your WordPress content.
#1. Link to Older Content
Long-form content and pillar posts tend to attract the most organic search traffic. Whenever you publish new content, be sure to link back to these evergreen pages. This "ages" pages in the eyes of Google, indicating continued relevance.
For example, if you wrote a detailed guide last year on "Elementor Review", link to it from any posts touching on Elementor or page builders.
#2. Use Descriptive Anchor Text
Avoid overusing generic anchors like "click here" or "read more". Instead, make links scannable and informative. For example:
- Read our complete Elementor tutorial
- Check out this guide to learn Elementor
Search engines analyze anchor text, so quality links inform Google about page relevance.
#3. Link Intentionally With Keywords
When linking internally, target keywords you‘re optimizing for. If you have pages about "Elementor headers" and "Elementor themes", link between these intentionally to show semantic connections.
For example:
Add this to Elementor headers post:
See our latest Elementor themes and templates for more design inspiration.
And add this to Elementor themes post:
To customize headers further, see our full Elementor headers tutorial.
This shows Google contextual relevance and drives more internal traffic.
Now that you know how to manually link effectively, let‘s explore plugins that can automate internal linking at scale across your site…
Top WordPress Plugins for Automated Internal Links
Manually building high quality links between hundreds or thousands of pages is extremely challenging. Thankfully, plugins leverage automation and AI to handle internal linking at scale.
I evaluate and compare the top options:
1. Link Whisper
Link Whisper is the leading all-in-one internal linking plugin. As you write posts, it uses AI to automatically suggest related pages to link to based on relevancy to the current content. This saves tons of time while expertly optimizing silo connections between content.
I especially like the detailed link reports and analytics about existing links/opportunities. They also offer advanced functionality like mass automated linking and broken link checking in the Pro version.
Overall Link Whisper is a premium tool that takes the guesswork out of internal linking at scale. The artificial intelligence gives it a huge competitive advantage when it comes to automation.
2. Yoast SEO Plugin
The hugely popular Yoast SEO plugin has robust functionality for optimizing and managing internal links.
Within individual posts, Yoast analyzes content and provides smart related post suggestions as you write. This helps manual linking with good AI accuracy.
For understanding existing internal link structures, Yoast provides detailed reporting on:
- Which pages are linking to the current post
- Anchor text used in existing internal links
- Opportunity to add more links from current page
The free version has great tools to facilitate manual linking. For advanced automatic linking, the premium version includes an internal linking assistant.
Overall Yoast is a top choice, either as a standalone option or paired with Link Whisper for maximum impact.
3. RankMath SEO
RankMath is another very popular WordPress SEO plugin similar to Yoast. It has an internal link counter and useful reports for tracking links pointing to a particular page.
In the near future, RankMath is building an "Internal Link Builder" using AI to automatically suggest contextual links as you write posts. The focus seems to be more on automation versus just reporting.
Long term, the internal linking capabilities look very promising as RankMath enhances functionality. It‘s definitely one I‘ll be keeping an eye on and revisiting in future content updates.
4 Essential Tips for Next-Level Internal Linking
Beyond core linking strategies and leveraging plugins, here are a few bonus tips for success:
#1. Use Semantic Keywords in Anchor Text
As covered earlier, incorporate keywords in anchors for optimal SEO and click-through rates. Rather than:
Generic: Read more about Elementor <a href="#>here.
Do:
Learn how to use Elementor in our complete Elementor tutorial.
#2. Link to Category Archives & Useful Hub Pages
Linking to category, tag, and taxonomy archives helps index these pages and shows semantic connections. For example:
Related reading in our Elementor category archive.
Or to hub/landing pages:
See our main Elementor resources page for more tips.
#3. Mix Internal Link Frequency
There‘s no universal standard for exactly how many internal links per page is best. My rule of thumb is 3-10 well-placed contextual links won‘t appear over-optimized.
Mix it up in terms of anchor text, location on page, and pages linked to. Avoid linking schemes that look obviously engineered to manipulate Google.
#4. Make Sure Links are Working
While writing new content, always test any internal links pointing to older materials. Fix or remove broken links over time. This helps readers and search engine bots seamlessly crawl your site.
Many of the plugins above automatically identify broken internal links as well.
Conclusion & Next Steps
Well executed internal link building should be a foundation of any effective SEO strategy. With WordPress, it‘s easy to optimize and automate high quality internal links across all your published content.
Start by implementing the essential tips covered here manually, focusing on linking older evergreen content and using meaningful descriptive anchor text.
Installing a dedicated plugin like Link Whisper takes it to the next level. Leverage artificial intelligence to scale contextual internal links across hundreds or thousands of pages effortlessly.
I hope this complete guide gives you the internal linking confidence and expertise to substantially improve search traffic and performance!
To dig deeper, check out my in-depth hands-on tutorial showing step-by-step installation and configuration for link building plugins.
Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments section below!
