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Internal Blog Linking Experiment For SEO Part 2
By Todd | December 22, 2008
Spending 5 minutes, one time, to move from #44 to #12 for a keyword with 3,400,000 result pages is in my book 5 minutes worth spending. A couple weeks ago I blogged about a blog linking experiment I was doing to see if a simple, one time, 5 minute change to my blog would improve my rankings. In this post I’m going to go over the fairly impressive results I’ve been seeing with this technique that I picket up from Jeff Johnson.
The technique is simple and yet so few people do it so I felt it was wort blogging about. Most people are aware that internal linking on your website or blog is like crack and can’t get enough of it. Search engines love it and you’re ranking in the search engine results pages (serps) will reflect this. simply cross link your blog posts when there is relevance between then and it not only helps users find related content on your blog but the search engines will value your site more.
Here’s a tip I picked up from Jeff Johnson a few weeks ago that seems obvious in hind sight. At the bottom of each blog post place your top 2 or 3 keywords you want you blog to rank for and have them link back to your home page. This tells google that indeed the home page is the most important page on your site AND that these keywords are what that page is about.
This last point is important. Most people have a “home” link on their blog but it lacks the keywords so while you’re passing some link juice back to your home page you’re not passing it for the relevant keywords so it doesn’t help you in the serps for those keywords.
This blog had that same problem. I’ve always had the home link in my nav but it wasn’t until I added the keywords to the bottom of each post that my rankings really started to move. (btw, the code for these links was added to the post template so I don’t have to add it separately for every post)
So lets go over the SERP ranking for the past 2 1/2 weeks (btw, the keyword learn affiliate marketing had over 3,400,000 result pages which makes this technique even more impressive)
December 3, 2008
- Learn Affiliate Marketing - # 44
- Affiliate Marketing Course - #29
December 3, 2008 (later the same day!)
- learn affiliate marketing - #32 (moved up 12)
- affiliate marketing course - #23 (moved up 6)
December 9, 2008
- learn affiliate marketing - #22 (moved up 10)
- affiliate marketing course - #22 (moved up 1)
December 22, 2008
- learn affiliate marketing - #12 (moved up 10)
- affiliate marketing course - #11 (moved up 11)
So for a 5 minute effort it seems the pay off is clear and well worth it. Every time I do a new blog post I’m helping my blog home page as well. I suspect both of these keywords will land me on the front page of Google within a week form this post.
There are additional techniques that I can use that would have moved me up to front page in probably half the time but were not used here because I did not want to contaminate my experiment and only focus on this particular techique described above.
If you’re not linking back to your home page at the end of your posts with your primary keywords then what are you waiting for? I won’t happen all by itself!
Topics: SEO, link building |
18 Comments »
Trackback responses to this post
- Internal Blog Linking Experiment for SEO Part 3 | Long Tail Treasure
- Learn Affiliate Marketing Ranks 1st from 7,200,000 | Long Tail Treasure
Great! So…did you just add those links to your single post page template? I know you aren’t adding them each time your do a post. I may try this out man!
Now…I need to figure out what keywords I want to rank for on my blog, it’s always been a problem because I talk about so many things!
Thanks for the report though.
hey Joe thanks for dropping by.
Yeah I just added it to the footer of the single post template like you said. I made them h1 tags which is important. I should have mentioned that in the post.
Anyway, because h1 tag is a block type tag in css you need to make it display inline if you have more than one keyword like I do otherwise they’ll stack up and look all whacked.
Finding the right keywords is definitely an issue for sites that cover a range. I’m pretty sure “learn affiliate marketing” probably wouldn’t work for your site though
lol
later man
on a side note … you’ll notice my squidoo lens for the keyword learn affiliate marketing is actually #1 on google at the time of this writing. The technique I used to do this over the past 2 weeks will be revealed in new blog post in the next couple days.
cheers
I really want to add this to my Wordpress Blog. Do you have some type of tutorial showing how to do this? I really want to add a few keywords I would like to rank for like you did. Please let me know the steps of how to do this.
Thanks in advance.
Chad
I have used this and it does indeed work.
It also is worth mentioning that putting links in your posts that point ot other topic areas of other posts can also help. I have done this for quite a while and it took longer to show results then main page linking, but I now have 2 other pages besides my main page that rank well and have PR over zero. I know PR isn’t the best way to look at a page’s value, but hey, I like anything over zero…lol
Great blog, great ideas and keep them coming in the New Year!!
Ed Manning’s last blog post..NBA Scenario Odds
Hey Ed what’s up? Haven’t seen you around these parts in a while … too busy rollin around in all that sports betting dough huh?
You’re absolutely right about the internal links to other relevant posts. It’s pretty important that google see you value specific pages within your site. It’s also just good usability to cross reference your posts where it makes sense to do so.
Hey Ed, I got some really cool stuff coming shortly, including some video for seo experiments. Seems how everyone’s all on fire about video these days I’m going to be putting it to the test shortly.
cheers,
todd
Hi Todd,
Thanks for this post. I just added this bit in one of my new blog with two KWs. For first KW I am at 29th position and for other KW I am nowhere on google.
I will let you know how positions will change.
Thanks again!
PG
@PG -
Hey PG!
Hey thanks for giving this a run through. I’m certainly interested in seeing how it works out for you. I’ve been testing it on one of my other blogs and it seems to be helping there too.
It’s interesting to check each day to see my keyword position since it can change by 8 or 10 spots (up and down). Some niches I notice the up and down movement isn’t so erratic but for some there’s a lot of movement.
Anyway, please do let us know how it works out for you.
cheers,
todd
Todd,
I’m pumped but I’m not quite getting it. Is what you’re referring to the
“Topics: SEO, link building” bit after the 2.0 options?
James Mangosteen Dean
James Mangosteen Dean’s last blog post..Mangosteen Juice Helping With Thalassemia, Testimonial # 1
Sorry man, but I’m not following you.
Doh! I just saw that this was part 1! Sorry. I thought this was part 2.
James Mangosteen Dean
James Mangosteen Dean’s last blog post..Mangosteen Juice Helping With Thalassemia, Testimonial # 1
LOL, now I get it. You last comment was misplaced. no worries man.
cheers
Hi Todd,
Please forgive my ignorance, why do we care if our Home page ranks in Google? Is it not the post that matters (I assume this is where you have your valuable content, and affiliate links?)?
Is it that you want the general home page for the blog to rank, rather than specific posts so that visitors start nagivating from the home page in order to get the full experience of your blog? Perhaps I just don’t understand the structure of a blog (or the purpose for that structure, maybe)…?…
Hopefully, that’s not a dumb question.
Thanks in advance,
Carrick
Hey Carrick
No worries and nothing to forgive, it’s an excellent question.
The posts certainly matter a lot and I do want to link build to them and have them rank for sure, but not using the links at the bottom of the posts as shown in this experiment.
The reason is that because I’m adding these links to the template the same links will appear at the bottom of every post. At most I would only want to have maybe 3 keyword links at the bottom so this means I’d only be able to link to at most 3 posts in my blog. The question would become “which 3 posts?”,
Another issue with linking to posts is what happens if in 2 months I have 3 different posts I’d rather point to to help rank? Do I change the template and break all the link juice I’ve built for the last 3 posts?
So rather than trying to use this technique to rank 3 posts it’s better to use it to rank for the keywords that pertain to your blog as a whole rather than just 3 posts which might have their own specific and more targeted keywords.
This doesn’t replace trying to rank your posts, it’s just a technique to rank your blog as a whole for it’s primary keywords. Your posts will often likely have more specific keywords that you would want to use other link building techniques for.
For instance, within the “content” of certain posts it’s a good idea to link to other posts in your blog that are relevant. This is more appropriate internal linking strategy for blog posts.
One other thing I should mention is that depending on your situation you may want to link to your squeeze page if you have one instead of your blog home page.
For instance if your squeeze page is to sell something and your blog is just to drive traffic to the squeeze page then you probably want the squeeze page to rank rather than the blog home page.
In my case my squeeze page is a sign-up for my FREE course so I’m not selling anything and I’m not making any direct money from the course. The primary purpose for my free course and for my blog is to build a following rather than selling something directly. Since my purpose it so build following I want my blog to rank first because I want to build momentum for the blog and have people join me on the various social sites like twitter etc.
I hope that clears it up a bit.
thanks for the question Carrick.
cheers,
todd
It seems like you stopped building links. I checked your site on google for learn affiliate marketing and you on number 42.
This experiment has shown me that building link is a continual process.
using the method described in this experiment the internal link building happens when a new post created. And yes, I did not post for a few weeks. The truth is I was launching a new niche campaign that I plan to release as a case study for you guys and it’s been occupying a lot of my time.
I certainly hope to start posting a lot more again right away. I’ve got a lot of great material from my case study to share.
You’re right, link building is a continual process. But in the case in this experiment it’s internal link building which is automatic if you continue to blog.
External link building is also a continual process for sure because your ranking is always in competition with everyone else trying to rank and if they’re link building and you’re not then you’re eventually in trouble.
One thing to keep in mind is that once you reach a certain point with the campaign income you can outsource your link building. There are companies around the world where you can get a full-time link builder for under $700/month. If your websites can convert the traffic then it’s not hard to cover this expense and much more.
At the time of this comment “learn affiliate marketing” is ranking this blog #42 like you said, and the other keyword “affiliate marketing course: is ranking the blog #18.
I haven’t been doing much external building for “learn affiliate marketing” lately mostly because my squidoo lens is already ranking #1 for this keyword and I funnel a lot of that traffic through to my course and blog.
cheers,
todd