Plan for Analyzing and Optimizing Internal Link Structure
-
I've noticed that our site has what appears to be a poor ratio of external-to-internal links. I know there are no hard and fast rules in SEO but generally I've come to understand that this ratio should be relatively balanced, and in some cases I've seen some correlation of high-performing/ranking sites closer to 70-30 (external-internal). I'm not going to get into specifics, but our ratio is well-below 50-50 (heavy on internal links compared to the volume of inbound external links).
My hypothesis is that this is diluting the link equity/authority for the domain. Moz's tools don't really provide any data beyond the initial data point of the volume of internal links compared to external. Being that I've never really gone down this rabbit hole before, I'm wondering if anyone else has ever experienced anything similar and could point me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance for any assistance or guidance!
-
I completely disregard those numbers. Completely.
On an informative site, I would use every genuine text connection in Article A as an opportunity to link it to other articles on the website. If you look at wikipedia articles, you will see an example of what I am talking about. We make those hyperlinks bold on our site becaused we believe that bolding increases the number of times visitors will use those links (and generates more pageviews that are monetized by ads).
On a retail site with related content articles we have two approaches.
1) On the article pages that explain the use, maintenance, selection, etc. of retail products, we use bold hyperlinks to direct the visitor to: A) pages where mentioned items are sold (this is done to help visitors easily connect to a sales page while information about the article is immediate in their mind); and, 2) pages where informative articles about that same product are located. This is very similar to the linkage on informative article sites.
- On pages where products are sold we cut back on linking, and focus on linking only to pages were accessories are sold; and pages where important information about the item being sold is explained. This decreased linkage is to help the visitor maintain their purchase intent, yet give them easy access to accessory purchases and the most important product information.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why my website internal links on moz is 0?
My Web site: https://www.basictrailers.com.au/ I have been using Moz for almost 3 months, from the start to now, the internal links are always 0. However, if I check the links on my Google Search Console, it is over 1500. So what is the problem? If Moz is trying to make its algorithm similar to Google, why that they even cannot find my internal links. That is ridiculous. 0fhTnQG
Moz Pro | | Lilycharlie2 -
Losing links
my blog/website is at ocpatentlawyer.com. My reports are showing that I'm losing links. Is there a way to find out which links I've been losing to see if it is something that I should be concerned about?
Moz Pro | | jamesjd710 -
Can open site explorer miss incoming links?
In open site explorer I only see one linking domain, eventhough I know of at least 1 other. Why is that?
Moz Pro | | ResourceLab0 -
Competitive analysis of inbound links
I am trying to figure out how to best use SeoMoz tools to do some competitive analysis of inbound links. With the site explorer tool I can "compare Link Metrics" I see that a competitor is beating me on External Followed Links and Total Linking Root domains. I want to dig further into this data and see how these are distributed. What I am really after is which root domains are sending them the most links. Knowing that 20k of their links are coming from 5 specific root urls would be great to know. Is there anywhere that I can see this data. Ideal column headers would be: Linking Root Domain of Followed Links (from this root domain) Linking Domain Authority The ability to drill down from there into specific links would be mind blowing. Is there any way to browse this type of data in SeoMoz?
Moz Pro | | dantheriver0 -
On page links tool here at Seomoz
Hi Seomoz - first of all, thanks for the best SEO tools I have ever worked with (this is my first question in this forum, and also I just subscribed as a paying customer after the 30 days trial you guys offer). My question: After having worked for several weeks on getting the numbers of links in our forum on www.texaspoker.dk down, we are somewhat surprised to see that we didn't succeed in getting lower numbers. For instance, this page: http://www.texaspoker.dk/forum/aktuelle-konkurrencer/coaching-projekt-bliver-du-den-udvalgte has (that's what Seomoz seo tool tells us): 239 on page links. Can this really be true? We can't find these links, and we actuually did a lot to lower the numbers of links, for instance the forum members picture was a link before, and also there was a "go to top" link in each post in the forum. Thanks a lot.
Moz Pro | | MPO0 -
What are no followed links?
Hi there, probably this is so self explaining that I didn't find it described in the tutorial about learning to use PRO or here in Q&Α. But remember, there is no dumb question 🙂 What are the followed vs no followed links? I understand followed links as backlinks to my site, but what is a no followed link? Thank you in advance!
Moz Pro | | polyniki0 -
Can someone explain why I have been seeing an increase in the number of Linking Page URLs in OSE that link directly to downloads?
Ever since the last couple Linkscape updates when doing competitive back link analysis I have noticed a large increase in the number of URLs of Linking Pages in OSE that result in an immediate file download. The majority of the time these downloads are not common files ie PDF, DOC files. For example, these were all in a competitors back link profile: http://download.unesp.br/linux/debian/pool/main/i/isc-dhcp/isc-dhcp-relay-dbg_4.1.1-P1-17_ia64.deb http://snow.fmi.fi/data/20090210_eurasia_sd_025grid.mat http://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/me/HTML/ES204_0708_S/working model examples/Le25 mad hatter.wm?a=p&id=145880&g=5&p=sia&date=iso&o=ajgrep These are just a few I came across for a single competitor. Is this sketchy black hat SEO, some sort of error, actual links, or something else? Any information on this subject would be helpful. Thank you.
Moz Pro | | Gyi0 -
How do I get a list of my non-followed links
Our site has a lot of non-followed links showing up on the latest SEOMoz Competitive Link Analysis update and I would like to know how to get a list of the sites that aresettin no-follow.
Moz Pro | | oznappies0