Do more internal links to a page mean better ranking?

[TomSnow]

I read an article about how to calculate Page Rank of a page based on internal links to it.

The more internal links to the page, the more importance Google will place on it.

At the moment I'm planning out my entire websites informational structure and I've based my interlinking on related pages, user flow, etc, with no emphasis on placing more interlinks to the page that should make me more money. Wondering if I should?

Thanks!

PS I also believed exact match anchor text in INTERLINKS is fine, just not in backlinks from other sites. But another article written by a supposed SEO guru said never use exact match even in interlinks. Funny because my competitors use it all the time and are fine.

[Wilburforce]

In the old days site structure had an effect on PR, so that in a pyramid structure with Home page (with the most internal links) at the top, the upper pages would generally have a higher Google PR than lower pages.

That is a long way from saying the more internal links to the page, the more importance Google will place on it, as adding 2,000 internal links to a page with no importance at all is more likely to incur a penalty than to raise its importance. Also, PR has been dead and buried for a very long time, and while we can debate about whether PR is a deprecated version of Authority (and I would expect some similar ranking mechanism to remain in Google's algorithm), it is no longer a visible or measurable number, and there is no magic formula that can tell you how internal links affect it, or where the optimum lies.

As for adding more internal links to the pages that make more money or manipulating anchor-text, anything that might look like manipulation to Google - artificial inflation of links or unnatural-looking anchor-text - is more likely to damage your site than to make you more money.

Design your site for users. Make it easy for them to find what they want, not what you want to sell them (although by all means make that easy too: don't hide your premium products in the basement). I'm not sure what you mean by "exact match anchor text": matching what, exactly? Your anchor-text should reflect what the user can exect to find when they click on the link, not what keywords or synonyms you want the page to rank for. Internal links within text flow should fit the context and the destination page. To paraphrase Tom Sharpe, don't call a spade an earth-inverting horticultural implement, and don't expect Google to penalise you for calling it a spade or reward you if you don't. Generally, calling a page different things in different places will just confuse your users.

Above all, take a very sceptical approach to SEO gurus. You'll generally find much better advice here.

Your site will probably do best if SEO is a by-product of good practice rather than an end in itself.

[JorgeV]

Hello-

From my experience, it does not improve ranking, nor it penalizes it, but, it helps with the frequency of visit by crawlers. The more a page has internal links pointing to it, the more crawlers will come frequently. This is not helping with ranking, but, this can help get fresh content indexed faster, which, in a way, can help.

[tangor]

Personally like to keep internal linking LOGICAL and of benefit to the user. Any link takes you away from where you started, so make sure having that link makes a difference, else you can LOSE you visitor early!

[browndog]

Personally like to keep internal linking LOGICAL and of benefit to the user. Any link takes you away from where you started, so make sure having that link makes a difference, else you can LOSE you visitor early!

That's what I do too, it's not about Google, it's about helping the visitor find additional pages they may find helpful/interesting. I also use text in the most logical way I can, without excessive use of keywords. So if I'm writing a general article about widgets and linking to an article on blue widgets, that is exactly what I will call it...and not find a way to stuff keywords into the topic.

[tangor]

I'm a big fan of "RELATED: xxxx" for internal stuff. Any OFF site linking I do will be at the BOTTOM of the article and I will NOT let the visitor leave early if I can help it!

Then again, internal site links can be not only obtrusive, but abusive as well ... look at just about any page on Wikipedia!

[lucy24]

If the number of internal links were a ranking factor in and of itself, wouldn’t this mean that large sites would always have an edge over small sites? It is quite possible they do--but I really doubt it’s for that reason.

[Wilburforce]

Another point which now occurs to me - I probably should have mentioned this in my earlier post too - is that outward links from a page were historically presumed to pass some of the linking page's PR to the linked page: adding an internal link from a high ranking page to a lower ranking page would dilute the higher page's PR. What is to one page's profit is to another's loss.

Adding more internal links, therefore, is never going to be win-win. If your landing pages are doing well in Google SERPs, adding links to other pages from them may not have the positive effect you are looking for.

[TomSnow]

@Wilburforce

By exact match, I meant the anchor exactly matches the target keyword. In my case, the target keyword also perfectly describes the page. So from a user standpoint it's fine, just wanted to make sure it wouldn't incur a penalty.

Thanks for all your help guys!

[NickMNS]

outward links from a page were historically presumed to pass some of the linking page's PR to the linked page: adding an internal link from a high ranking page to a lower ranking page would dilute the higher page's PR.

This is categorically false. A page has a page rank, adding links to the page does not alter the PageRank of the page where the links are located. If a page has a PR of 8, adding links does not alter this in any way. Where I think you are confused, is that the linked page's PR can be diluted. For example, you place a 1 link on a page with a PR of 8, the linked page then received a PR of 8. If then one ads another link to the initial page pointing to a second page, then the PR is divided by number of links 8 PR / 2 links = each page then get's a PR of 4. Now if one link is outbound and the other is inbound, then one would be "sharing" ones PR with external source sending 4 PR off of ones own site.

Even in that case, It wouldn't make a big difference unless the internal link was the only one pointing to that page. If this were the case it could easily be resolved by moving the external link up one level, that it is to the internally linked page.

But the bottom line is that all this is great in theory, but in practice, Google doesn't seem to be sticking with a plain vanilla application of PR, and how, where and when they deviate from it is anybodies guess.

[brighteryeg]

There's not a meaningful correlation between internal link volume and rankings but they can still be valuable. As other posters have pointed out the pages being linked from and the anchor text can both help search engines understand your content better. Internal link building is always part of my process to spread link equity around and add context.

[tangor]

@brighteryeg ... Welcome to Webmasterworld!

Internal linking that makes sense and benefits the user is the best kind possible. With really large sites it can also help keep the INTERESTED visitor on site for just that much longer. :)

Internal links mean nothing to the "scan and done" visitor and there's not much that can change that kind of visit.