Take your internal linking a step further by linking to subcategories from the parent category page

Katherine says: “Don't underestimate the power of linking to subcategories from the parent category page.

On most websites, you would link the subcategories on the menu side under the category. This essentially means that the subcategory and other pages on the menu are linked to all pages on the website, which signals that these pages are important.

Some websites stop here but I think you can take it a step further by linking these subcategories to the actual page of the parent category page. That is essentially internal reciprocal linking (linking from the main category page to the subcategory and then from the subcategory page back to the main category page).

The category page itself is a really authoritative page. When you get these relevant keywords for the subcategory pages, mention them on the category page itself, add links to these subcategories, and vice versa, it helps you to improve rankings and clicks in most cases. You’re taking advantage of link equity.

It also helps with conversion because it helps you move the visitor down the sales funnel. If you have some content on a category page that recommends a specific type of subcategory, (‘consider this product’, for example), users can click on that link within the main body content and go to the recommended subcategory where they are likely to convert. All of this translates to better rankings, better clicks, more engagement, and more conversions.”

Does having these links in the main body content have a measurably positive impact?

“I've seen really positive results. We worked on a wholesale swimwear brand that had subcategory pages. They were linked to the main menu bar, as usual, but they were not mentioned on the category page or linked back to from those pages. So, we found the relevant keywords that were mentioned and added links to specific subcategory pages.

Within a few weeks of just doing that, we saw really impressive results: over 710 new keywords were gained and we improved rankings for around 500 keywords. The new keywords we gained for those pages were around 43% of the total keywords. It was a really big deal.

In some cases, we were seeing ranking improvements on pages that were not ranking in the first place. We had basically no ranks for these pages and, within a short time, they quickly went to the top 10 and top 3. In some instances, there was no mention of the relevant keywords anywhere on the website. We started looking for some of these keywords, like ‘swimsuits under $20’, ‘size 24 swimwear’, etc., that we didn't really optimize for, but we saw great ranking improvements just by doing this.

You should have links in the nav menu as well, but you don’t have to put those links in the menu alone. Go a step further and make it more meaningful for the user. Help them understand why they should visit that page in the first place.”

How do you establish what keywords you should have within those links?

“For instance, if you have a category for women’s swimwear, the subcategories might be ‘plus size women's swimwear’, ‘swimwear for juniors’, etc. You can do keyword research and target relevant keywords with relatively low difficulty and higher volume. You could target ‘women's plus size swimwear’ or ‘plus size swimwear for women’, depending on what makes sense in that context.

You can take that, and you don't even have to stuff the whole page with it. Just one or two references are enough. Then, add a link with valuable information on why this subcategory exists and where they can go if they want to check it out. That is enough to do the magic and get the results.

We’ve seen measurable, significant improvements in rankings just by doing this, without building any other backlinks or making any other site improvements. We make changes one at a time on the website and, for a few weeks after we made that change, we did not make any other changes. It was a really impressive result. On some websites, it might not have that great of an impact but, in this example, we are seeing tremendous results that were easy to pinpoint.”

How do you determine the pages that you want to try this on?

“For this website, we focused on subcategory pages where we weren’t getting many links – pages where we were only getting around 2 links in 30 days. We also focused on pages that had really low rankings, in the 20th-24th position. We focused on 4-5 per page and implemented this.

They were all indexed, and they had content. They were the same as those that were performing well, these links were just not mentioned on those specific pages.”

Does this strategy assist with pages getting indexed?

“Getting pages indexed is more about making sure that the content is valuable, it's not disallowed from crawling, there are no noindex tags, canonicals, etc. Internal linking won’t particularly help a page get indexed if there's a noindex tag on that page, for instance. It’s an additional improvement to the performance of an already indexed page.”

Should there be a certain maximum number of links on a page?

“I don’t really have a set number of links in mind. In the past, some people recommended having 100 links or fewer on a page but that was mostly because search engines were only crawling and indexing around 100 kilobytes per page at that time. That limitation doesn't exist right now so there is no set number of links.

Instead, go with what makes sense, and don't overwhelm the user. Include links where they can help provide additional information or help the user to really understand that content, rather than just filling up the page.

If you take into account the menu links, the links on the footer, and the rest, it can really add up. In the content itself, just go with what makes sense to the user. Personally, I don’t have a specific number of links that I would recommend.”

Do you have a strategy for the positioning of links?

“The positioning of links is really controversial, especially because of the first link priority argument that keeps coming up. The theory is that, if you have two links on a page, then the first one could be prioritised. However, as Google has mentioned over and over again, there is no set rule for this. They could go with this today and tomorrow it could be something else.

For linking multiple URLs on a page in different positions, I don't think there is any negative or positive effect from that. I still stand by going with what makes sense to the user.”

Can you automate the insertion of internal links, or do you prefer to do it manually?

“It depends on the size of the website. If you're dealing with a smaller website, it makes sense to do this without third-party tools. You can do it quite quickly. Go to your Google Search Console, get a list of your authoritative pages (the categories that are ranking well), put that into a spreadsheet, go to your search browser, use site operators to find related pages, and then interlink them in this way.

If you're dealing with a medium-sized website, you might want to speed things up by using a tool like Screaming Frog to run a custom search. They have a really awesome custom search feature where you can find mentions of specific keywords on a website. You can also use advanced features like searching with regex and searching for keywords that don't have an anchor tag, which means they don't have a link on them. You can also exclude keywords that already have internal links on them.

When you're dealing with a larger website that has millions of pages, it doesn't really make sense to do this research manually or put the links in yourself. You could use automation tools like InLinks. I haven't used it personally, but people I know have spoken highly of it. It can automatically find internal linking opportunities and add those links to specific areas of your website.”

What types of pages would you not want to be ranked or linked to within your own site?

“It depends on the specific pages. It could be a page for a product or a category that is retired. If you retire a category, it doesn't make sense to link to that and try to rank it. Also, it doesn't make sense to rank for out-of-stock products. If users come to your website and see that almost all of the products in a specific category are out of stock, that wouldn't create a good user experience.

In this case, you might prioritise the pages that are in stock, the pages that are available, the pages that have a higher profit margin, and those that it would make sense to present to the users.”

Would you try and remove all the internal links to an out-of-stock or retired product page?

“Not necessarily, but it depends. If you're talking about an expired product that does not exist anymore, it might make sense to remove some of the internal links and create a page where, if users hit that expired page, they can get more information. It could explain that you’ve retired that product and why that has happened, and offer a list of related products. If it’s gone for good, you could remove some of the internal links to that expired page.

However, if you're talking about a product that is temporarily unavailable, it wouldn't make sense to remove those internal links. If you're optimizing, it makes sense to optimize pages and products that are available over those that are out-of-stock. If you already have internal links to those out-of-stock pages, and you know that they're coming back, you don’t want to remove them.”

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?

“When it comes to internal links, stop neglecting user intent. In most cases, you could add links to a page where it doesn’t necessarily make much sense to the user’s intent at that point. If a user hits a category page on fitness gear, and you're adding links to a subcategory that has been retired – or even your resources page – that doesn't make much sense. It won't help the user move down the funnel.

At that point, they want content that explains how to use the specific type of gear for their particular need. It makes sense to think of the user’s intent. What is the user trying to achieve? What can give them additional information? Add links to the pages where they can get additional context.”

Katherine Nwanorue is an SEO Specialist at Fusion Inbound, and you can find her over at TechSEOJournal.com.