Internal Linking (Ongoing Improvements)
Internal linking is what Google uses to determine the important pages on our website. We can tell Google which pages we think are important by consistently linking to them.
Anchor Text
The anchor text needs to be relevant. So, if we link to our Round Rock page here
https://bramlettresidential.com/areas/suburbs/round-rock/ we would want the anchor text to be something like the links below. The more specific, the better, so each link is in order of preference:
Which pages are important? Blog Posts vs Optimized Pages
- We publish tons of blog posts because they easily rank for long tail keywords. These are the posts that we publish at https://bramlettresidential.com/blog/. We do not want to focus on internally linking to these pages because they are not optimized for conversion. We do want to internally link from these pages to our optimized pages.
- Our optimized pages are pages like https://bramlettresidential.com/areas/central/allandale-78757/ that have listings on them (there are some others, but these are primarily the optimized pages). We want to link to these pages as much as possible. We want to:
- Link from our blog posts to our optimized pages at every opportunity.
- Link between our optimized pages. Link from our optimized pages to other optimized pages as much as possible.
- Almost never link from an optimized page to a blog post.
Optimized Pages & Anchor Text
- You can generally look at the title of any optimized page to determine its anchor text.
- The home page https://bramlettresidential.com/ is our primary concern. Anchor text: Austin > Austin, TX > Austin Homes for Sale > Austin Real Estate > Austin Real Estate Agent > Austin REALTORs
- The buy page https://bramlettresidential.com/buy/ and "buy a home" related anchor texts.
- The sell page https://bramlettresidential.com/sell/ and "sell a home" related anchor texts.
- All area/neighborhood pages that live at the https://bramlettresidential.com/areas/ path (like the Round Rock example above).
- We have hundreds of these pages and publish more all the time, so this is a big opportunity.
- School pages like this https://bramlettresidential.com/schools/austin-isd/bowie-hs - We have yet to build many of these out, but will do so.
Internal Link Types
We have recurring link boxes in the footer and within the pages. We also have link boxes that are automatically added to blog posts, etc... We don't need to do anything with these.
- Contextual Links are the best types of links. This is when we can insert a link like this: https://www.screencast.com/t/6yWDjzge -- We want to do that at every opportunity.
- Link Boxes/Areas are also very good when they're relevant. Here's an example of how we could improve the "Moving to Georgetown" page: https://www.screencast.com/t/kQib6zzud
- Number of Links per Page: We can add as many internal links per page as we like. However, it doesn't make sense to link to the same page more than once. So, if you've already linked to the home Austin, TX page somewhere, don't worry about linking again. If you've already linked to the main Georgetown, TX page once, you don't need to do it again. It won't hurt, but it's a waste of time.
- Anchor Text Variation: It doesn't matter that the anchor text is perfect, it just needs to be relevant. Homes in Georgetown is great. Georgetown Texas is great. Anything that is relevant is a great link and variation is good.