Stop neglecting internal links and your link profile

Bill says: “We still have to be looking at links and links from other websites. I really love to optimize and increase the number of internal links, but we need to talk a little bit about the link profile of your website and the links from other websites as well.”

How deep do you go with links? Are you talking about tier 2, tier 3, or even deeper than that?

“For years and years, we were always looking at just the tier 1 links. Tier 1 is basically another web page out there linking directly to us. In 2024, we need to start looking at tier 2: who is linking to that website that is then linking to us? That would be tier 2. We can even go further beyond tiers 3 and 4, and so forth.

When Trust Flow, Link Juice, PageRank (or whatever you want to call it), passes from one website to the next, your web page gains that credit. You build up a little more authority and trust through those links.

In 2023/24/25, let's go beyond that and start thinking about the next step. Who is linking to that website? How are they getting their trust and authority? In a lot of cases, you can bypass that and go directly to an even higher authority that's linking to a website that would then link to you. You can get even better links by looking at tier 2 and tier 3.

Not to mention the fact that the tier 1 links may be looking good, but, to really evaluate that website you need to know: are they part of a blog network? Are they part of some other kind of link network? Are the links that are linking to you natural? It’s about looking at the profiles of competitors and the profiles of the links that you currently have and potentially can get.”

If a website that’s linking to you lives in an environment that contains links that aren’t highly trusted, could that negative authority impact the perception of your site?

“It could definitely have an impact. I think the more likely case, though, is simply the fact that search engines might just be ignoring those links.

If you have a healthcare-related website, you want to get some on-topic links from other healthcare websites. However, one healthcare website might look great at tier 1, but if you look at tier 2, it could contain mostly computer and IT-related websites that are linking to that health website. Trust is being paid forward, but it's not necessarily topical trust or it's not on-topic from tier 3 to tier 2 to tier 1.

You ideally want the network that lives around that site that's linking to your healthcare website to be natural and to be in the appropriate niche.”

If you establish that a network that links to you is an environment that you don't want to be in, is disavowing links still an option in 2024?

“Sure, you could disavow them. I would say there's probably a better chance that Google's just ignoring them.

They're now officially saying that disavow is only really for cases where you have some kind of link penalty, unnatural links, etc. We're at the point where Google recognises most link situations and, frankly, they are essentially disavowing certain links already.”

How do you use Majestic, and do you use any other tool to dive into the multiple tiers of links that you're reviewing?

“I pretty much have Majestic open all day long, and there are so many different tools that I'm regularly using in Majestic. Anything from Bulk Backlink Checker to Topical Trust Flow, but also exporting links into spreadsheets and sorting them when there are a lot to deal with.

I look at anchor text a lot and, in many cases, that's a very good clue. If it's a certain domain, I want to look at the link graph to make sure that the network or link profile looks more natural than unnatural. Let me tell you, I've seen my share of really unnatural-looking link profiles. Once you get past tier 2, it can be very interesting.”

What's the biggest red flag for an unnatural link profile?

“If you're looking at a link graph, you're specifically looking at the dots and the connections between them. If there is a cluster of links anywhere in that view, that's going to be something you want to zoom in on and see.

Maybe there’s one website (or two or three websites) from that whole cluster of dots that are very close to each other, that is then linking over to you.”

What traits are you looking at to try and establish whether the links have been built unnaturally?

“I'm mostly looking at the fact that there actually is a cluster. It’s fairly rare that those are natural links. There are some cases where, let's say, there's a news website and the company or website was linked to from some kind of news source. In today's media environment, a lot of media websites link to each other. In the United States, we have ABC, NBC, Fox, and different local stations, so they all link to each other and they all link to the parent company – CBS, NBC, and so forth. That would be a network and that would typically be fine.

More and more, however, smaller business websites and medium-sized websites (like attorney websites, home inspector websites, real estate websites, and even some healthcare websites) tend to have these unnatural link profiles where there are clusters of links. It can be possible to sever those links or get them removed in certain ways.”

Would you ever try to build your own tier 2 links, by building links to the tier 1 links that point directly to your website?

“The more natural (or more ‘white hat’) way of doing that would basically be through traditional social media. Let's say you write a new blog post on your blog, then you go to your socials and share it.

I did this today. I wrote a blog post for a client and posted it on their website, then I went to their Facebook page, their LinkedIn, their Twitter, etc., and created social media posts. Those are links that you're linking. I take a section of that blog post and put it on as a LinkedIn article, then I'm actually sharing and building links to that LinkedIn article that then links back to the original blog post. That’s the more natural way of using social media to create links.

There are other ways too. If you’re mentioned in the news, you would want to build some links to the article that then some links back to your website to make sure. Mostly, my reasoning behind building those additional links and mentions is to make sure that the search engines crawl those particular pages.”

How often should you be analysing your tier 2 links, as an SEO, to see if any clusters appear to be unnatural?

“My process is to analyse the link profile anytime I do a mini SEO audit of a site, where you pull out the crawlers and you crawl. It could be once a month, it could be every three months, or it could be every six months. Also, any time that there's a Google update.

We are going through a Google core update right now, as we're talking about this. When that's done, and you've noticed any ranking changes or you’ve noticed less traffic, or you look at Google Search Console and you’ve seen that data start to go down, that's the time to pull out all the tools.

First, crawl the website and make sure that there aren’t any issues with the website itself. Then, you go over to Majestic. Are there any new links? Look at the link graph. Are there any clusters that you are not familiar with? Zoom in a little bit and check out some of those.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“A lot of people are thinking that they have to build a lot more content. Content, content, content. First, deal with the content, pages, blog posts, and articles that you currently have.

Build more internal links and put a pause on some of that content generation for now. Use a tool like Majestic to see all the pages on the site that Majestic knows about. There are inevitably going to be certain pages that have some links from external websites. Spend some time increasing the internal links to those pages that are a bit more powerful.”

Bill Hartzer is CEO at Hartzer Consulting and you can find him over at Hartzer.com.