Internal Links And Search Engine Optimization

So when it comes to SEO, we are told to get as many relevant backlinks, i.e links from other peoples' sites to our sites' as possible. Preferably links with our keywords as the anchor text

But what about the internal links on our sites.

To my aplomb I found out that the internal links on your site make a huge difference to your rankings

I have a 30 page website the homepage of which has been ranking in the coveted number one position in the Google SERPs for about 40 keywords, that I am aware of, for the last two years

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I did something silly

I decided to update the site. Really Silly!!!

I changed the titles of the inner pages on the website, not really changed but altered the arrangement of the words

Problem is the original titles of the inner pages had my main keyword first and then the keyword for the subniche that the individual page was targeting second

• e.g affiliate marketing backlinks

All I did was change to subniche keyword first and then the main site keyword second.

• e.g backlinks affiliate marketing

Didn't touch the home page

All the inner pages have links to my home page

Anyway, the next crawl of my pages by the google bot came along and it's like a really dark kind of magic.

My homepage disappears from the first page of google. For all of the keywords that it previously ranked for

OMG!!!

Going from position 1 to position 60, 70 or ... Does not bear stating

It's obvious what happened here.

The internal links of my site were giving my homepage a BIG SEO BOOST for the keywords my homepage ranked for.

Because those keywords were high up on my internal pages!

By pushing the keywords further down on my inner pages as viewed by the search engine bot, SEO juice kind off ebbed

The content of the internal pages linking to your home page does really matter with regard to SEO so be warned

Till next time