Internal Link Structure and Passing Link Juice Internally
Many webmasters are familiar with the idea that inbound links to web sites benefit their position in search results. The linking benefits passing from one site to another are often referred to as Link Juice or PageRank.
A less commonly understood concept is the flow of “link juice” from one internal web page to another. The internal linking structure of a web site determines where link juice goes internally, ultimately affecting which areas gain higher rankings in search results. The more links there are to a page, the more link juice it is capable of passing around internally.
Each of the internal webpages linked from a particular page are assigned some of its link juice by search engines. The homepage often has the highest Google PageRank (PR) level within a site. PageRanks range from zero to ten (PR0-PR10), largely based upon the quantity of links to a site from relevant pages. PR plays a major role in setting the position of a page in Google results.
Perhaps a cooking web site has a PR3 ranking, but one recipe page has a zero rank. A link to the recipe page from the homepage would be capable of passing some link juice to it internally, possibly raising its rank to a PR1. This will make it easier for searchers to find than equivalent pages that still have PR0, after search engines have identified and recorded the new linking structure.
Getting other web sites to add links to some types of pages (original content, homepage) is easier than others (republished content, promotional material). An optimized linking structure can help areas which would otherwise have difficulty receiving any link juice to gain it internally from pages that have inbound links to them from external web sites.
One way to determine which internal pages are in need of more link juice is to use a PageRank checker to see which pages have a low or zero ranking. Then make sure that the internal linking structure includes these pages and is passing sufficient benefits to them. It helps if the links are between related internal pages; this is more of a concern if the site is about multiple subjects.
In this context, it is important to think about the need for different internal pages to gain link juice and improve their search rankings. Webmasters should try passing better rankings to product, information (content), and promotional pages, while areas like the site map, privacy policy, and terms of service hold less importance in this respect.
Basically, the internal link structure of a web site can be fine-tuned to enhance the search traffic of specific pages, by passing more “juice” to them internally. However, this structure cannot act as a full replacement for quality inbound links from other web sites.
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Link Building Tips | seowhitehats | March 16, 2009
Thanks for the overview. I think I see what it’s saying. Using good link text to some of my sub-pages that I would like ranked would help.
Thanks for the article. Does an internal link carry as much weight as an external link? Given they both have the same PR of course. I always thought external carried more “juice”
With the same PR, external links should carry more “juice”. We find that that websites overlook the importance of internal link juice, often called ‘PR Sculpting’.
All my sites are WordPress based.
I read somewhere else that this CMS pretty much optimises the internal linking automatically
My sidebar contains a link to every page as it is on every page.
Is it worth adding additional links in the page content then to make the page rank for additional keywords?
wordpress is prety optimized … plus you can install plugin