Structuring Your Internal Links

Structuring Your Internal Links

There are two main types of internal linking structures – hierarchical and mesh

1 - Hierarchical linking

Hierarchical linking is used where one or more pages on your site (such as the home page) are considered more important than other pages. Important pages are linked to from all other pages in the site, but not all pages cross-link between each other. This concentrates Page Rank on your most important pages

Most sites should use a hierarchical linking structure, whereby the home page and the most important product, service, or content pages are linked to more often than other pages are. In this way, you can slightly increase the chance that your most important page is ranked the highest on Google for your most important keyword phrase. The following figure illustrates this concept.

The home page typically has the highest PageRank, as this is the page most often linked to, both externally and internally. Note that this may not be ideal if your home page is nothing but a splash page or contains little content. In this case, you should redesign your home page to include more content and make it more relevant to Google (and to your visitors). If this is not possible, you should link internally to your most important keyword-relevant content pages.

2 - Mesh linking

Mesh linking is used when all pages are considered equally important. This is the simplest linking method in that each page on the site links to every other page on the site. Many sites use mesh linking by virtue of having the same menu or navigation bar for each page. This evenly distributes PageRank among all pages in the site, which is generally not ideal. The following figure illustrates this concept.