Internal links for SEO benefits are real? You can bet your bottom dollar!
The MAJORITY of business blogs I look at – 50% are not LEVERAGING Internal Links!
That’s right – let’s dive into adding internal links throughout your site, the benefits, and how to go about adding internal links the right way!
Hello everyone! Jen Ruhman here reminding you to get your internal link strategy solid and flu shot this year! Pssst… OK make that a COVID shot instead.
Here’s a big fat example of internal links in your face now: 😳
(notice the purple hyperlinks in the text below – guys and gals -those are internal links.)
Internal links are not being used enough in my opinion. In fact, I recommend this SEO strategy in my blog post promotion checklist. BTW I just made an internal link there. You may also remember I mentioned internal links in my 5 Tips to improve your website’s SEO. BAM! I added another internal link there too. OMG those internal links up above are beautiful, I’m so proud.
Internal links are a two-way street. I will add internal links to this very page you’re reading now and internal links to other pages from THIS page.
Internal links on your website may feel like high fives from yourself BUT Google really thinks they’re cool!
Internal Links – You NEED them on your website now.
What exactly are internal links?
Internal links are the links you create to other pages on your website.
For example, you may have a blog post about healthy brands of dog food. And you might have a blog post about recipes to make your own dog food at home. You can include a link to the recipes page in your blog post about brands of dog food. Heck, it makes sense because it’s helpful and may be interesting to the user’s audience.
Internal links are #2 on this list. Look at my Yoast score – wow I’m good…
How your website’s SEO benefits from internal links:
Be sure to leverage your most popular blog post that already receive a lot of traffic. Simply add internal links on your winning pages to help boost the page ranks of less popular posts.
They “POWER-UP” the pages you want to rank HIGHER in Google
Internal links boost CTR (click-through rate)
They tell google these links are related content and have authority.
Pages that have a high number of internal links pointing to them are seen as important pages on your websites.
Doesn’t this sound amazing?
With internal links, you can optimize your anchor text to your preferred keywords.
Let me explain:
Let’s say you have a website about credit repair services:
Your blog will have posts such as “How to Build Business Credit the Right Way”
These blog posts about “credit” will gain you the authority in the subject of “credit”
the blog posts will have an internal link pointing to your “credit repair services” page
You gain a higher CTR – click-through rate
And your blog posts will have an internal link to your home page about “credit repair consultants in Atlanta
How I implement internal links:
I like to take a notepad and make a list of the related blog posts by copy and pasting URLS.(pictured below)
I open up all the blog posts and add the new internal link I want to integrate.
That’s it, nothing too difficult!
OK, and that’s it for internal links for SEO benefits.
I hope you start implementing this tip. Just as powerful external links help you rank higher in google, internal links from your other high authoritative blog posts (getting traffic) can “power-up” the domain authority of these pages you send traffic to easily with internal links.
Just as easily obtainable backlinks from infographic submission sites and directories are good external links, internal links are even easier.
BTW. If you have too many blog posts that have not received any traffic in the past 6 months – either rewrite them and make them higher quality or remove them and 301 direct those pages to similar pages.
Want to pick my brain and talk SEO? contact me … I don’t bite
Everyday is an adventure – as in… you never know what mood Google is going to be in. (LOL a little SEO joke there)
– Jen Ruhman
Content is King but… SEO is your Queen!
-Jen Ruhman
It really brings joy into my life helping business owners rank higher in Google and YouTube.
I’ve been doing SEO for years since 2004, but now it’s been my focus – especially during these past six years. (because SEO is very challenging and competitive nowadays)
SEO is not a luxury service, but a must for all small business owners to remain competitive in Google’s search engine.
Now that 1 in 7 people have a website of some kind, you’re in good company with 1 billion website owners that want to rank on the first page.
This blog post is going to be rather unique because it’s all about myself and how I really work as an SEO expert here in San Diego, CA.
Yes, sometimes I explain SEO as living a double life in the Matrix…
It’s pretty interesting explaining what SEO is and how I do it. The easy answer… Oh I help websites rank higher in Google search results…
Next, they’re like “but how do you do that?” And I say…
I write content that helps people and at the same time optimize it to make google bots understand I want to rank for certain keywords. Yes, there’s a lot going on in the background you would never dream possible. LOL.
– Jen Ruhman
Let’s dive in and talk about my life as an SEO expert!
Here are my typical work schedule tasks: (everything happens after my cup of coffee)
Providing quotes
Getting great backlinks/networking with other SEO experts
Working on making YouTube videos for SEO
Blogging / optimizing blog posts
Adding internal links throughout your content
Corresponding with clients
Creating / editing service pages
Optimizing new / old content
Making your site faster
Updating content as the client’s request
Updating google my business
Sharing your blogs on social media
Writing guest posts to gain you a backlink
Updating the client about progress/direction
Checking the competition
Learning new skills
Adding/implementing new technologies and strategies
Making a list of items to work on for your website
Reports / invoicing / book keeping
Cleaning the house
Walking my dog
Getting dinner on the table! mMMMm.
Mornings
Yes, I get to wake up on my own schedule and it’s AWESOME of course! I think this is a BIG reason why I’m so happy!
Every morning I check my emails to see if there’s anything newsworthy from my clients or if there’s any problems I need to immediately address. If there’s anything urgent, I make a list of things to do ASAP!
The dorkiest thing I do, is usually checking to see how my well cared for keywords are ranking! Really, I will google my target keywords and get excited to see jumps in search results! 😁 I will do my happy dance and grab a sweet treat and reward myself! Woo hoo! First page!
This pineapple knows what’s up!
Next, I like to check out some of my favorite fellow SEO experts on Youtube and see how their tested strategies are doing. I love listening to them while I’m getting ready in the morning. It’s exciting when someone has a new strategy I want to test on one of my own sites and later on use for a client’s site.
Which SEO experts do I enjoy?
I used to really used to enjoy Neil Patel but now I like Ruan Marinho, Chris Palmer, and Brian Dean.
Next, I go into my garden and nurture my plants and sit back and enjoy my morning water or coffee. It’s really important that I do something nice for myself every morning before I start work and that is usually taking my dog for a walk at the park or just tidying up the house nice and neat to feel grounded for day.
Mid-Morning
I’m ready to get started doing SEO! Watch out world!
Crank up my SEO programs
Get out my iPad, MacBook Pro, HP laptop, and my iPhone (because I like testing on all my devices)
Review my work order schedule
My work schedule for the month is blocked in such a way that I pick one client for the day to work on their site. Depending on hours, I may work for one client three days in a row. It’s really important to have a plan of action and strategy for each unique client. Three-hour blocks and a 30 minute break time works best for me, heck I work from home – it’s fantastic!
Afternoon
Time for more coffee! The question is… will I brew it myself or take a trip to get a McCafe (current guilty pleasure – caramel frappe!)
I agree with everything this woman’s coffee cup has to say 😉
Phone calls
This is when I usually schedule times for phone meetings / zoom / onsite meetings
It’s important to me that clients don’t “feel like a number” I really enjoy talking to my clients and genuinely helping them. Attentively listening and taking notes, brainstorming, Some of my clients are so awesome, we will have our meetings at the Cheesecake factory! How cool is that?!
Rankings
Yes, I like to check my Google Analytics and Goole search console for all my clients’ data
Spy on Your Competitors
My clients have competition and I like to see what they’re working on and what’s beneficial for them that I can emulate and do better!
I will see which blog posts they’re promoting or which pages are their most popular and see how I can steal that traffic! (like a bandit)
Breaktime!
I will get far away from my computer and go run errands or spend time with my family, most of all go outside an enjoy the gorgeous weather in San Diego!
Yes, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about your website!
Yes, I will SEO your website to the top and Yes again, I will pray your website to the top too!
– Jen Ruhman
I call upon my SEO skills and also my faith, why not!?
Sometimes I will wake up in the middle of the night and think about other strategies I can utilize for your website! My mind will “experiment” where to make the changes and run through the process since no two websites are the same. Sometimes I will meditate to see if the universe wants to talk to me and give me insights. Last night I woke up and wrote down a note for myself in the morning. “make sure you do not cache this contact form page – its code is breaking when I minify it. Make a new rule in CloudFlare…”
Sometimes I will even pray for miracles and guidance. I know it sounds strange, but this morning my prayers were answered.
I’m thankful for the SEO clients God has placed into my life and it’s my pleasure to serve them.
Yoast SEO Tools Bulk Editor is the best way how to change titles and descriptions FAST!
This is included in the free version of Yoast. Yay!
Also known as “META TAGS”, every SEO expert in the world knows how to add META tags but most don’t know how to change them in bulk.
Yoast is by far the best way to change META tags in bulk.
SEO audits always discover META errors…
They will also warn you about “missing META tags” or “duplicate META tags”…
Heck, sometimes you just need to refresh your titles and descriptions to something more enticing aka clickbait.
Instead of going into each and every blog post and page to fix the problem… (spending hours) There’s a faster way to make edits.
Why Would I want to update my meta titles and descriptions?
It’s a great element to test. For example, if you’re not receiving many clicks on your blog post, you may want to experiment by making the title and description more enticing. You could add some sales copy that triggers your target market. Second, you might want to update it if you included a previous year in the title. Time to update the year to make it look current and update your content.
So How do I quickly change my Meta Titles and Descriptions?
Allow me to introduce you to a free solution. If you have the famous free YOAST SEO plugin, you already have this META tag tool. However, most people have not discovered this feature when using the plug-in. It’s the quickest way to add/update your meta titles and descriptions all listed accordingly.
Yes, you could open up each page or blog post and edit the meta tags one by one. You could scroll down to the Yoast plugin and make the edits there.
I will say one thing I noticed about Yoast’s bulk editor, sometime it does not save all the new titles or descriptions you just made when you hit “save” or “save all”
Here’s how you can manually go into Yoast and change each meta title and description. It may take a little longer to do but, you’ll be able to make sure your title and description is the perfect length. Second, you can make sure you’re adding your keywords into the meta title and descriptions. Simply click on the preview to make it become editable down below.
I have the ULTIMATE 2021 blog post promotion checklist for you right here!
Here’s a bunch of unique ways to promote your new blog post that nobody talks about.
Alright, you just hit that “Publish” button on your blog post, now what?!
Hey, you need to promote your blog post whether it’s free promotion or paid promotion! That’s what!
Why Do I need to promote my blog post?
Your blog post needs to be promoted to rank well in search results. PERIOD. If you don’t promote your blog post, it may lay dormant and undiscovered for a long period of time. Promoting your blog post helps create buzz that there’s something new and exciting people should be reading!
It’s the fastest way to get traffic to your new blog post
It may take time before you see your blog post indexed by Google’s search results
The fastest way to start earning backlinks on your new blog post (you need backlinks)
Not promoting your new blog post is the number one mistake I see rookie bloggers make.
The days of “post and pray” are long gone. With so much competition out there, you HAVE to promote your blog posts. Don’t worry, you can promote your blog posts for free, I’ll show you the free options and the paid methods you can spend $5 on OK?! If you follow this easy blog post promotion checklist. This is what I use for clients after I publish a blog post and it works.
👋 Do you have a Shopify store? You can use this checklist for new store products + add these Shopify SEO Tips
Follow along with my 2021 Blog Post Promotion Checklist:
Post On Social Media Multiple times!
I know you’re tired of hearing you should post your new blog post on social media, but it’s true. Here’s some extras nobody talks about. You can use a service like meetedgar or buffer to automate your social media. Side note on meetedgar, I like that you can add a post with different titles and automatically reshare at random. The beauty of adding this automation is first, you’ll look like you’re constantly updating with fresh content. Second, you’re giving your content a second chance to be discovered. Third, you’re giving your content a Google social ranking signal that it’s being shared on social media. Hopefully, your post will gain likes and shares. If it does, Google will help increase your rankings.
Pick 5 items on this Blog Promo Checklist:
Pinterest: Make sure you create a custom image to share on Pinterest that has a text headline that solves a problem. Use Canva to create it!
Twitter: Post your link with a photo and some relevant hashtags.
Facebook Fan Page: Post your link with a photo and great headline.
Personal Facebook Account: Share the post from your fan page onto your personal FB account.
Facebook PAID: Boost your post on your FB fan page for $5 and retarget people that liked/interacted with your post.
LinkedIn: Post your link with a photo and great headline.
Reddit: Find a subreddit where you can post. You may need karma points before you can do this.
Instagram: Share this blog post link in your story if you’re able. (have large enough following)
Instagram bio link: Share your latest post in your bio with a https://linktr.ee/ link. (you can have multiple links this way!)
YouTube: That’s right Use a free program like Lumen5 to generate a video from your blog post. Publish on YouTube with a link to your post!
Ask your friends on social media to share your post.
Podcast: Create a new podcast on your blog post since you will already know what to say! Embed the podcast into your web page so people can listen to your new blog post instead of read. This will also increase the dwell time on your page! A Google ranking signal.
I know this an overwhelming ULTIMATE list of FREE ways to promote your blog post. So feel free to pick a few to start with. You don’t have to do every item on this checklist. In fact, it’s good to just concentrate on a few instead of stress yourself out over promoting your new blog post. This post is sole intended to show you a huge checklist of ways to promote your blog post that you’ve never seen anyone talk about.
Email
If you have an email list set up or just want to send out to your friends/family, do it!
Use your free Mailchimp account to automate a new blog post to your subscribers each time you publish a new post! Grab your RSS feed. Piece of cake.
Add your blog post to your email signature. It’s super cute and adds a personal touch of charm. The example below: (why am I so adorable?) LOL
Internal Links
Got popular blog posts already? Add an internal link on the popular blog posts back to your new blog post. This gives a little “link juice” to you new post.
Add internal links on your new blog post to other related posts. This will help your CTR (clickthrough rate)
Part of off-page SEO, you need links pointing to your blog post. You need backlinks from high domain authority websites to pass link juice to your blog post. The bad news, nobody is going to want to link to your blog post if it’s not helpful. The good news, you can hire me to get links for you! If you know a lot of blog owners yourself, go ahead and shoot them an email asking for a link.
Add your new blog post to web 2.0 sites. You can simply copy and paste your blog post into Medium.com as long as you use a canonical link. This will help you gain backlinks to the post as well as gain traffic to your blog post from these high traffic websites. For example on LinkedIn, leave out a last tip and make the user have to click on a link to your blog post for the final details.
Sometimes, a super long blog post can be better as a visual. Get an infographic created for your new blog post and share it to an infographic directory. This will gain you backlinks, as well as traffic.
Big thanks for checking out my blog post promotion checklist.There’s so many benefits to promoting your blog post that I’ve covered here. If you’re not promoting your blog posts, you’re missing out on a HUGE element called online marketing and off-page SEO.
Many small business owners think that if you post fresh blog posts regularly, that’s all you need to succeed with Google. While it’s beneficial to post regularly and on a schedule, it’s not enough.
Thank you so much for reading my latest blog post. If this helped you, I’d greatly appreciate it if you share it! (as mentioned above LOL)
Finally, a list of SEO friendly directory websites for instant backlinks!
Got ZERO Backlinks? This List of Backlink Opportunities is for You!
This list of directories is perfect for new websites to start building trust with Google. Especially if you have a small local business. Don’t worry, this is a safe white hat link building strategy for your websites.
If you have a new website that’s still in the “Google sandbox” (not indexed yet) you don’t want to be aggressive with building anchor rich backlinks.
That could flag your website as spammy! I recommend you wait a few months before slowly getting “money keywords” as anchor text. Be patient when adding new links, quality backlinks pointing towards your “money site” is far better than low quality / spammy links.
You want natural, high authoritative (high DA), quality backlinks for your website’s SEO foundation as all SEO experts want for their back-link building strategies.
More High DA business citations = more quality backlinks pointing to your website
More QUALITY backlinks pointing to your website means a higher domain authority
You need Domain Authority
Yes, you do need great backlinks from a diverse and high number of domains. Don’t believe me? Go to google search and check out the top-ranking websites’ backlink profile. The top search results usually have the highest amount of quality backlinks and domain authority.
That being said, if you’re trying to rank for keywords while you have low domain authority, chances are simply put – you most likely have a low probability for ranking on the first page of Google search results.
When you add your “NAP” to the directories, you want to make sure you select the right city and business category. Some directories may not have your specific industry available but that’s OK. Just select as close as you can. As long as you have your “NAP”, you’re OK.
Ideally, you want to make sure you’re getting directories for your niche business AND the City your business is located. (BIG thanks to https://chrispalmermarketing.com I learned this tip from this SEO guru)
Here’s how you can search for specific directories in Google: “allintext: directory plumbing San Diego”
Yes, they will give you a small and very specific list of directories.
Are you ready for the BIG list of SEO friendly directory websites?
Have this list of things ready in a text document and folder labeled “Directory Backlink Campaign” It just helps because you won’t be making all these backlinks in a day. You’ll most likely want to spread out gaining these new backlinks dripped to your website through a few months.
Make sure you keep a record of the username and password you use to set up these directories because if your business moves or changes the website, etc, you need to update it everywhere! Below is a list of items you need in order for your directory submissions. Some directories don’t need all these items, but it’ good to be prepared because some give you these opportunities.
Most of all, you want to keep your information consistent!
Here’s what you’ll need for your directory citations:
A high-quality image of your logo
A few images of your business or service images/products/menu items
Short business description
Make sure you have a consistent URL such as “https://www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com”
Phone number
Email address
Consistent address
Consistent wording for your business “Buckboards BBQ & Brew or Buckboards Barbecue and Brew”
Any social media account usernames/addresses
Access to your business phone/email if some listings need verification
Be on the lookout for these directory listing opportunitiesHere’s an example screenshot what the fields look like for entering your business information
I hope this massive list of backlink directories does not intimidate you.
Take your time and grow your citations slowly aka drip them. If you have SEO clients. These links may take a while for Google to crawl and discover. It’s best to let Google naturally discover them. And if you’ve got links still on your mind, don’t forget to give your internal links an SEO boost.
ATTN: Shopify store owners – Don’t forget to add these directory backlinks to your eCommerce store. + add these Shopify SEO tips.
PS: Guess what? Your Youtube videos need backlinks too! Follow my Youtube SEO tips here.
If you’re looking for an SEO expert that can submit your “NAP” across the web, contact me!
Thanks for reading my SEO friendly directory websites list. You know what would make my day? If you shared this blog post.
I LOVE Ranking Small Businesses Higher in Google Search Results! My favorite moment is when my clients call me saying… “Jen, whatever you did to our website, we’re finally getting more calls and emails…THANK YOU!!!”
