Understanding Internal and External Links for SEO

Bear with me. I am going to ramble a bit, cover lots of ground and eventually answer your question. I think your question is asking about external links to your site, but, I am going to wander a bit and discuss internal links, external links, text anchors and eventually long tail keywords.

First, I'd like to suggest that you do not have to have all links go back to you first page. Google can consider any page on your site important and any page can turn up on page one of search results.

Second, there is a difference between internal and external links. Please cut me some slack, it is entertaining (to say the least) to put this on paper and include all the ramifications and variations. However, I think I can get across some useful concepts ...

Internal(as from your local blog) and external (as from another domain) links are used differently by Google. You need to know the difference and create internal and external links accordingly.

External links affect your Google PR and position in search results, internal links affect Google's interpretation of your page intent. To understand the different, read on.

Use internal links to tell Google what page is the best page on your site for a particular keyword. Try to focus internal links to one page for each particular keyword.

Google looks at internal links (links between your site pages) as biased, as they are. However, this is not a problem. Since Google assumes that internal links are biased, Google assumes you are using the links to point out the best pages on your site for specific keywords. Logically, Google uses internal links to determine what pages you especially like on your site for specific topics. If you have a dozen blog articles on your local blog that have anchor text (text that is linked to another page from within your article) using the phrase "home sales" and all links point to the same page, within your site, Google gathers that the referenced page provides your best information on the topic of "home sales." If Google decides to bring people to your site for the phrase "home sales," Google will probably direct the people to that page (and it does not have to be the first page of your site). HOWEVER, Google knowing what pages you like best does not assure you that Google will place you on page one for search results for "home sales," it only helps Google differentiate what your pages contain. Does that make sense?

If you have 12 local blog articles, on your site, each having anchor text of "home sales" and having internal links to 12 different pages of your site, you have failed to help Google use your internal links to identify the best page on your site to refer people to on that topic. Focus your internal links and help Google understand what pages are valued for what content keywords. Don't dilute the value of a specific keyword phrase by spreading your links to dozens of different pages on your site.

Just to head off misinterpretation, I am not saying you can not have links to different pages in any one article. I am simply suggesting that if you use a particular phrase as anchor text, tend to point any cross-links from that particular phrase to the same page on your site.

Did any of that make sense???

Since this blog is getting a bit long, I will tackle the use of External links in my next forum blurb ... if someone doesn't beat me to it.