Why External and Internal Links are Important for SEO

Introduction

Relevant internal and external links improve your website's search visibility and rank in the search engines. Hyperlinks on a page of your site are known as internal links. These links direct the visitor or reader to your targeted page on your website. In contrast, external links are the hyperlinks to direct the readers to a page on another reputable website. 

The concept of external links may seem counterintuitive - after all, you don't want customers to leave your site by clicking on external links. For SEO purposes, you may, however, be able to appear to be an authority if you link to trustworthy content (from authority sites, not spam-like sites).

It would help if you remembered that other websites and companies can also give external links to your website or page links in their content. Let suppose your site has a great blog post with detailed information about a specific topic; another website or company may provide a link to that URL as a good source for their post or blog. 

You may have heard it as a backlink. 

These two kinds of hyperlinks are the key to improving your rank on the search engine result page.

External or internal links: What'sWhat's the difference?

External links connect one domain with another. Your website may contain links to other websites to provide readers with additional information or affiliate programs. External links can also refer to links that connect your site to other sites, but inbound links are preferred as they can easily be differentiated from your relations.

A website or domain's internal links only point to other websites within that domain or website. There are internal links in the menu bar at the top of your site. Another simple example of internal links is the links from one page on your site to another on your site.

In summary:

• External = links that point to a separate domain

• Internal = links that point to content within the same domain 

Benefits of Internal Links

Internal links are of great importance as they engage the reader to your content or site for longer. These hyperlinks provide a tremendous and positive user experience on the site and may encourage the visitors to become potential customers. 

Internal links are accessible to the viewers on your web page, boosting the authority of your page and site. You can say that internal links are used as call-to-action. 

For example, a viewer on your site might spend more time pon your page, get engaged in the content, and read more articles by clicking on them. 

Adding internal links can enhance a website's rank and visibility in a search engine. The text of your hyperlink, also known as anchor text, should be a descriptive and specific keyword that aids search engine bots in crawling or better understanding your content and the context.

Internal links are also helpful for search engine bots to analyze other pages on your website. A properly indexed page is to navigate for a search engine bot. It means that the page will be there in the search engine collection of web pages; as a result, your site can be easily found.

Benefits of External Links

External links matter both in terms of quality and quantity. If you add high-quality and trustworthy website links to your pages, you will improve the credibility of your website, whereas if you add low-quality, spammy links, your website will suffer.

Linking to the external website will not harm your page ranking if you connect to the relevant content and authoritative sites. 

External links are preferable if these links are to the relevant and popular pages with good ranking and are closely related to the content of your page. 

If your external links are valuable, they will improve your website's authority by providing references to the viewers.

When you link to a website, that site will analyze that you are trying to connect with them, and probably they will link back to your site if you have valuable content on your website. 

External links are also known as outbound links, and these links improve your website's credibility as they prove that you got a helpful website. These outbound links are great for building links in content and digital marketing. 

Also, these external links are an excellent source to get free traffic to your website, and you know that this is an essential element of your search engine algorithm. 

You can do an in-depth backlink analysis and access the backlink quality using ETTVI's Free Backlink Analysis Tool.

NoFollow and DoFollow Links

A word of advice to webmasters: no-follow links may drive referral traffic to your page, but they have very little value to the search engine.

If a site is concerned about overusing external links and wants to avoid being penalized, this can be used as part of its SEO strategy. This method is typically used by high authority sites with many external links. Nofollow links should not be used for internal links, however. 

In contrast, do-follow links tell search engines to follow the linked site and its associated pages, creating "link juice."

The term link juice refers to how much authority a page may have based on the number of external and internal links that point to it.

Link Management to Improve Your SEO

Google, for instance, has the power to determine ranking factors based on various factors, so these factors tend to appear more prominently to viewers.

An effective SEO strategy relies on internal and external links to help boost rankings.

The effort you put into mastering this link-building optimization process will be well worth it in the long run: your site's rank on search engines will improve.

References

https://setupad.com/blog/internal-vs-external-links-important-for-seo/

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-external-link-and-internal-link/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/283204