If you are using Shopify as your website CMS you’ll know it is a wonderful platform to help your ecommerce site grow.
But for real lift-off you’ll need to improve your website’s SEO to get more eyes on your products! One important aspect of SEO is internal linking, below we’ll look at some tips on how to improve internal linking on Shopify.
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What is Internal Linking?
Internal links are hyperlinks on your website that help visitors navigate through your website quickly and easily. In addition, internal linking can point to content you want to rank for, including blog posts and videos. As well as being a functional aspect of web design, it’s also a valuable tool for SEO.
Google bots use internal and external links to find your page. Once they start crawling your website, they navigate to the first link they find. These internal links help Google to understand the relationship between the pages on your website and the most important pages to prioritise in its search results.
The Benefits of Internal Linking for SEO
Internal linking is a vital part of building up SEO visibility on your site.
Your homepage generally carries the most link value because it typically has the most internal and external links. Google will pass on the link value from your homepage to subsequent pages and divide it between all the links it finds. And the more internal links to your content, the more value it has and thus the higher it will rank.
Let’s say you post a new service page on your site and don’t include a link to it. Google won’t know it exists or be able to rank it in your site’s hierarchy. This site hierarchy is essential to improve SEO visibility for your most important pages and content.
Internal Linking vs External Linking: What’s The Difference?
- Internal links point towards other pages or URLs on your own domain or website – eg. Digital Marketing Agency [Search Hog site]
- External links point towards other domains or URLs on another website – eg. Google SEO Tips [Google Webmasters External Link]
Internal Text Linking: What’s Best Practice?
Using descriptive anchor text is the best way to create internal links. The anchor text is a word or phrase that typically links to another page.
Good anchor text contains the following elements:
- Full or partial keywords that you want the page to rank for.
- Related keywords that provide valuable context without keyword stuffing.
- Descriptive text that accurately describes the target link.
- Branded links using your Shopify brand name.
- Brand + keyword to give additional context.
Relevant anchor text gives the Google algorithm more context to understand your site structure. In addition, descriptive anchor text enhances the user experience.
So linking to “the best coffee in town” lets Google and your audience know what to expect when they click. On the other hand, a link with generic text like “Click here to find out more” delivers zero context and doesn’t correlate with the page you’re linking to.
How to Choose the Correct Anchor Text for Internal Linking
Using anchor text for internal linking means you are signalling to Google what terms you want that page to rank for.
But how do you know what anchor text to use? It’s best to follow SEO best practice:
- Consider creating natural and appropriate anchor text to other relevant pages when writing content. Make your links descriptive and succinct – Google suggests up to five words.
- Use the keywords you want the TARGET page to rank for. You should have identified the most important target keywords for your site, but if not consider hiring a Shopify SEO specialist.
- Avoid overstuffing your pages with links, as this looks like spam. Use the surrounding text to give additional context for your well-chosen links.
- Consider linking to other relevant collections or products in product or collection descriptions. Ask yourself where customers would expect to land after clicking your link.
If going through every page on your website to add relevant links sounds time-consuming, it is. Fortunately, you can use Link Whisper Shopify app to speed up the process.
What is Link Whisper?
If you want to revolutionise the internal linking process, the Link Whisper Shopify app does the hard work for you.
The app allows you to create multiple sitewide internal links using SEO-friendly anchor text without the need to search your entire site to look for relevant links. In addition, it gives you detailed info on your existing internal links.
At Search Hog we use Link Whisper for improving internal linking on our client’s sites and have found it to be the best internal linking tool around!
Need Help With your Shopify SEO? Get In Touch
Whilst Link Whisper can help with automating Shopify internal linking, you will know doubt need to identify what keywords to use in your internal links, which is where we come in!
Search Hog are Shopify SEO experts that can help to supercharge your ecommerce site. Get in touch today to see how we can take your site to the next level.
