09 Jun Blogging for SEO: Links
When writing your blog, you should include both relevant external links and internal links. Internal links help the search engines figure out what pages you consider important. Internal links can help lower your bounce rate and keep visitors on the site for longer. External links (links to other sites – always set these to open in another tab) show Google that you want direct visitors to helpful, relevant content. Do both where it makes sense in your post. Always remember to make your anchor text for your link keyword-rich!
After you’ve typed the name of your link (ex. Check out our About page for details!) highlight the text you’d like to turn into a link. Once you’ve highlighted it, the link icon will appear in the menu. The box shown below will pop up when clicked. For external links, fill in the top part. You can do the same for internal if you know the URL right away. For external links, be sure to click the box for the link to open in a new window or tab. For internal links you don’t know, you can search for them and WordPress will find them for you.
When you link to someone else’s blog post, quite often, a snippet of your post will be automatically added to their comments. This is known as a ‘pingback’. The pingback link does not directly benefit SEO, but it does expand your reach and credibility! It lets the original blogger know you linked to him or her, and it puts your name and link in front of that blogger’s audience.