Creating An Internal Link Structure - Keeping Visitors On Your Site Longer

The internal link structure is not something you hear about everyday, but if you want to make the most of your traffic and your website, you'll learn from this and apply it immediately to your future efforts. This article assumes you have a basic grasp of search engine optimization and deep links, but even if you don't, you can probably learn something of value here.

Here's how all this works: You have a home page, which is subdivided into a number of sections. Let's say you have a website on quilts. You might have one section called "About Me", another section called "Blog", and maybe another section called "Products". These sections are all called deep pages, because unlike the home page, these are lower in a hierarchy of pages, and serve as areas of important information for potential web surfers.

Going Deeper
A deep page, then, is a page that has valuable content on it. Deep links are links that point directly to these deep pages, which is important because you're more likely to get people who are interested if they find what they're looking for immediately by following the link. These are critical because they bring you targeted traffic, or traffic that is actually going to your website because the topic piqued their interest.

If you get enough people to see your website who are there on purpose because of what they were looking for, you're in much better shape than just having the same number of people randomly stumbling on your site.

Now, what happens when someone follows a deep link from their favorite website or finds you via a search engine? Say they're reading about a rag quilt design on your hypothetical site, and they find what they're learning to be fascinating. They might want to know more about you and what you do.

It's your job to make this easy for them by leaving a breadcrumb of a hierarchy for them to navigate through, starting with your home page. In addition, you want to provide an internal link structure for them.

Convincing Visitors to Stay For a While
Now that we're here, you'll want to understand what an internal link structure is a little better. Basically, an internal link structure is the structure that you use to provide links from one of your deep pages to other pages on your website (usually other deep pages). This means that people who are reading about you in your blog might see a hyperlink on your favorite rag quilt, and if they click this, they'll be taken to your deep page on that particular rag quilt design. Search engines will like a site that's optimized with an internal link structure, but also, you're more likely to get people to stay longer on your site.

If you want to combine internal links with something even more important, you could try a link building service. One effective method is to have one page called a site map that displays all the pages and topics on your site, and to get some deep links to that page. Whatever your method, having internal links will vastly improve the appearance and usability of your site, so it is highly recommended that you create your own internal link structure.