Using The WordPress Content views Internal Linking Tool

Linking to other posts and pages on your own website or domain is called internal linking.

Adding links to your internal content has a number of benefits, not only for the website owner, but also for your visitors and the search engines. Internal linking allows visitors to view more of your content and ensures that search engines can better index your pages.

In this tutorial, you will learn about the benefits of internal linking, how it can help you, and how to easily add links to your content using the Internal Linking Tool.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about linking your content internally in WordPress …

Benefits Of WordPress Content Views Internal Linking

Basically, internal linking simply means adding hyperlinks in your content to other relevant posts and pages on your WordPress site.

Or, as Wikipedia defines it …

“An internal link is a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same website or the domain of the internet. Links are considered either “external” or “internal” depending on perspective. Generally, a link to a page outside the same domain is considered external, whereas one in the same domain is considered internal.” (source: Wikipedia)

Wikipedia pages are great examples of internal linking and they illustrate many of the benefits of adding internal links to your website.

Benefit Of Internal Linking #1 – Improved Site Usability And User Experience

Web pages are supposed to provide users with relevant content. By offering users easy access to other areas of your website that contain more of the content they want to see, you not only improve the quality and “usability” of your site, but also the quality of your website’s “user” experience.

Improving the quality of the “user” experience means that visitors stay longer on your site and visit more pages. In a well-thought out sales process, this can lead to improved sales conversions.

It’s important to make sure that what you are actually linking together is relevant for your users. For example, you might want to add links on your ‘Company’ page to your ‘Contact Us’, ‘About Us’ or your ‘Products / Services’ pages.

WordPress Content Views

Benefit Of Internal Linking #2 – Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Internal linking also improves your search engine optimization (SEO). By creating internal links to other posts and pages on your website, you are helping search engine spiders “crawl” your site faster, more easily and more thoroughly than if your site was comprised only of standalone posts and pages. This can result in more organic search traffic to your site.

One of the more effective ways to improve your search engine optimization, is to combine internal linking with keyword relevancy. This is easily achieved by adding links to relevant content on your site using keyword terms that you want search engines to associate with your business.

For example, if your business or blog provides wedding products or services, you could link the keyword phrase “Green Wedding Gift Ideas” from a post on different types of weddings, to another blog post on your site that offers various tips and ideas on where to find “green gifts” for weddings. This would help search engines to gain a better “understanding” of what your site is about.

Using keyword-relevant text links (also called “anchor text” links) is a lot more effective for search engines (and better for visitors) than simply having the words written on your page.

Benefit Of Internal Linking #3 – Increased Content Visibility And Exposure

Over time, as you continue adding content to your WordPress site, your posts will not only get older, but some will also start to become less popular (i.e. Less visited) than others.

If you have content on older posts or pages that you really want other people to see, but that are not getting as much exposure as your others posts and pages, you can place internal links within the content of some of your more popular pages pointing to your less popular pages to increase their exposure, and/or add links to older posts to help them get found again by your site visitors (and search engines).

Having more of your content being seen by visitors and accessed by search engines means more visibility and exposure for your business … and this can only lead to better results!

How To Create Internal Linking In WordPress Using The WordPress Linking Tool

In WordPress 3.1, an internal linking system was introduced that allows you to quickly link content on your posts and pages to other WordPress posts and pages on your site.

Prior to this feature being introduced, if you wanted complete control over your internal linking strategy, then you would have to manually search your site for the page you wanted to link to, then copy its URL and manually paste and link it in your content.

Now, performing internal linking in WordPress is very simple.

Here’s how to do it…

First, log into your WordPress admin, then find the post or page you want to add internal links to, open the page and select the WordPress visual editor. (<<< This is an internal link!)

Next, find and highlight the text you want to create as a link. This can be any word, keyword, keyword phrase, sentence, etc….

Once you have selected and highlighted the text you would like to turn into a link, click on the hyperlink icon in the WordPress visual editor…

By default, you will see the field called “Enter the destination URL” displayed. Below this field, is the section that allows you to create internal links.

Click on “Or link to existing content” to expand the internal linking feature screen…

Start typing a word or keyword phrase related to the text you want to hyperlink in the Search field. WordPress will automatically begin to retrieve related posts and pages containing those words …

WordPress Content Views

Click on the title of the post or page you want your highlighted text to link to, and the URL and Title of your selected item will automatically be added to the fields in the destination URL section …

If you want the link to open in a new window, then tick the Open link in a new window/tab box and click the Add Link button to create your internal link …

Your internal link is now created …

If you want, you can also format your internal links (e.g. make the link bold, italicized, add a background color, etc …) using the format buttons in your WordPress visual editor …

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily link content internally in your WordPress posts and pages!

WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site