Internal link Building

[florida dude]

Hello,
I have a travel blog website with travel informations about the whole world.
The structure of the website more or less is:
-Homepage
-Country travel blogs
-City travel blogs
-blogs

So for example if someone writes a blog about Paris, I made a php script that finds in the text the word France and links to the France travel blog page. And if in the text he writes about the Paris the php script insert automatically a link to the page of all the travel blog of Paris.
At the end of the travel blog the user wrote I also link 10 blogs about the same city.
This happen on all the 10000 pages user wrote.
Do you think this is a good idea?

Would it be better if instead of linking the city or the country I directly link another blog?
And the keyword in the link is for just Paris, would it be better if I insert a title in the link writing for example title="Title blogs about Paris"?
Thanks for your suggestions.

[tedster]

It really depends on your goals - but it seems to me that accumulating link power on the higher level hub pages is a good thing. I'd just make sure that those pages have more than just a list of links - descriptive snippets that differentiate each blog (and keep Google from giving the URL a gray bar, too.)

[florida dude]

Would it be better to link each time a different page?
Let's say there are 2 blogs about Rome. In the first blog i link with the word Rome the page with all the blogs about Rome, and in the second blog i link the first blog for Rome.
And is better to link for each time there is the word Rome (in this case) or to link just the first time?

[TheMadScientist]

I would keep all the links with the same text going to the same page, not only for search engines but to keep user confusion down, so if you link the word Rome to a specific page, then always link the word Rome to that page if it is linked.

If you have more than one blog or link on a topic, find a way to differentiate between the different pages from within the link text.

EG:
MENU HEADING: More Blogs About Rome
LINKED: Blog 1 Name (or Author): Rome
LINKED: Blog 2 Name (or Author): Rome
LINKED: Blog 3 Name (or Author): Rome

[florida dude]

And should I insert a title for the link for the word Rome?
I mean, instead of:
<a href="link">Rome</a>
<a href="link" title="blogs about Rome">Rome</a>

or this is not a good idea?

[TheMadScientist]

I usually do for user convenience, but haven't tested specifically for search engines...

It doesn't really matter to me what SEs do on some of the 'little things' because I try to do what's best for the user and IMO the best thing for a well built, quality, usable site is to put a title on the links, especially if they're short so users know more about what the link does.

If you look at the w3.org site and read the section about links the title should give more information about the link, not necessarily be the linked text expanded.

An example along the lines of theirs is:
title="Opens page of blogs in a new window"

You could even do it like this and be 'technically correct' IMO:
title="Opens page of blogs about Rome in this window"

Your title above would probably be fine too...

[Simsi]

Mighgt it help rank the Rome page for varied phrases if you varied the anchor text and perhaps used one from a set? IE: instead of always linking with the "Rome" anchor, use "Rome", "Rome blog", "Rome travel" etc etc.

One thing though: if you do this I would make sure the same page always uses the same anchor text, don't randomise it for every page load or it will unbalance the priorities.

[florida dude]

Yes I was thinking about selecting the title controlling the last id number of the blog.
So if the last number of the blog id is 1 is use Rome travel blog for the title.
If the last number of the id is 2 I can insert title="Rome blog" and so on.

I'm asking about this because if I go in the Google Webmaster Tools, in the Search Queries google is showing all queries of city and country names like
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Italy
London
Bali
Maldives
... and so on where I rank around the 200th position.

That is not a good sign. Could it be because i'm linking the city names and country names in the blogs?

[tedster]

Short queries that are only a location name are crazy ranking targets, especially for major travel destinations. I wouldn't give those reports a second thought. I'd look towards slightly longer and more targeted phrases. If you get extreme with internal linking trying to leverage it for "location" searches, you're more likely to get a penalty, IMO.

[florida dude]

Yes that's why i thought: "I don't want to rank for Rome, i want to rank for longer phrases". So that's why i thought that linking the keywords as Rome or Italy was not a good idea. Should i avoid that then? I don't want to rank for that.

[TheMadScientist]

I would link naturally... Remember surrounding text 'counts' too.

If it's 'most natural' and easiest for your visitors for you to link the word Rome then cool, link the word Rome and let the surrounding text and information lend more to what you mean by the word Rome... Sometimes I think people overdo trying to link the exact text they are trying to rank for and 'out think' themselves... If you have blogs about Rome and link the word Rome to the page linking to the blogs, then have some text on the page with the blog links on it describing what the blog links are about IMO you will be fine and doing it in a good way for both search engines and visitors... (If I'm understanding your situation correctly that is... LOL)

Don't even check the rankings for the word Rome, because who cares?

Maybe use the 'phrases' to link directly to the blogs at the bottom of the page?
Rome goes to the page linking to the blogs...
Phrases at the bottom of the individual pages go directly to the blogs...

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 11:21 pm (utc) on Aug 18, 2010]

[tedster]

That's the way I'd approach it - forget about the in-content linking a la Wikipedia. But maybe, on a Rome blog you might include a link to "All Rome Travel Journals" or something like that.

[florida dude]

Thanks for your suggestions.
And do you think I should link the word Rome repeatly or just the first time in the text?

[Simsi]

Just a thought: maybe someone could clarify, but if you followed MadScientisit's (sensible) advice and linked naturally (even with things like "click here" etc), could you use Title tags in the HREF to be more descriptive. Does Google monitor those to more accurately detect the theme of the nachor text/target page?

[florida dude]

But using the words Click here aren't you using extra words that are not really important for key targeting?

In the blog text i also look for cities in the same country, so if someone wrote a text about Rome, and in the text he writes about Milan, I also link from there to the Milan page travel blogs. Is that a good idea? I have Adsense on the website, and what i noticed is that sometimes instead of seeing ads about Rome, I then see ads about Milan in a blog about Rome.

[Simsi]

But using the words Click here aren't you using extra words that are not really important for key targeting?

Well that's where the title tags would come in *if* Google uses those. And would look more natural, the point being you could link any text. And not forgetting that the words and context around a link also count for something.

[TheMadScientist]

I would avoid Click Here...
Look at some of the big sites and see what they link.
(By big I mean the Yahoo! size sites.)

Of course Full Article or Full Story might be something I would use. (Maybe)

AFAIK the title of a link is NOT used by Google.
As far as other search engines go, IDK.

I do have a couple of sites I link state names to pages containing more information about a specific topic for the state in question and they both do fine, so I do actually follow my own advice and haven't had issues with doing so.