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Add self-referential links into your 2018 search engine optimization strategy

Patchwork quilt stitch your marketing website tightly together using internal links and navigation for google search results
Ted Nelson | Hypertext
Ted “Hypertext” Nelson

The only content links you can control are your own. One good way to do it is to make sure all your navigation is either textual or alt-text-labeled images. Flash is way dead. The better way is to remember way back to 1965 to where hypertext was invented by Ted Nelson and to remember that hypertext was developed as a way of linking together a stack of information “cards.” These hyperlinks were textual and were used as ready references to content relevant to what you were reading. Even today, web pages are still cards of sorts and hyperlinks are just a technical method of linking descriptive text to relevant content–via hyperlinked hypertext.

A garden requires planting, watering, cultivating, pruning, pollination, and feeding before the harvest. If you don’t know what your website garden needs, it’s probably cultivation. If Chauncey GardinerChance the gardener–did search, he would use the gardening analogy as well. For him, cultivation would include making sure that each and every page of his sites–including blog posts–had enough interpage and intrasite flow that there would never be a reason for a visitor to bounce off the page and back to Google or link off to another site.

Make sure navigation is sorted and easily accessible, yes; and, of course, never say no to related posts and related content links at the bottom of every page. That’s easy and can be done quickly and simply through installing a related posts plugin or customizing your template a little bit.

Linking from inside one article into another takes either a good memory or a bit of a plan.  When it comes to the Biznology blog, I choose my own articles 80% of the time. Sometimes, though, I realize that James Mathewson did a better job than I did in his Three Types of Relevant Internal Links to Boost SEO post (because it takes a village of bloggers to raise up a Biznology blog) but I also found 8 Things You Can Do To Significantly Improve Your SEO by Megan Totka as well (see, that’s how it’s done).

While it is much easier to do this while you’re writing your posts or putting together your pages, it’s sometimes not always easy to include these things in your first–and often only–draft. So, since you’re the gardener of your own online presence, it’s up to you and yours to quilt your website together using internal links. And if you’re compassionate enough to not put the onus of intralinking and interlinking onto your bloggers then you can do all of this during the editorial process afterwards.

Or, you can come back another day and do your gardening like the constant gardener you are, and link all that content together a little later, post-posting, post-publishing. The upside of including all of these internally-linked text phrases–these hypertexts–in the piece/post before publishing is in order to make sure the very first Google Bots and Search Engine Spiders see these links during their initial, most ambitious, spidering as opposed to maybe some later spidering.

An advantage of adding these links and making these changes days and weeks after the initial post is because Google is just an enormous diff checker, and so making sure there are updates and changes to your site–be it a new blog post, an updated content page, or additions and subtractions to current articles (including adding internal-facing links) excites the Google Spiders and Bots to come back, to return, and to re-scrape and re-index your content. If you don’t keep your site hopping, Google’s bound to eventually bench you with the second worst categorization that Google has: archived.

Everyone is still obsessed with begging and buying inbound links–and it’s 2018! Happy new year! Why? I get it. Old habits die hard and Google tends to say one thing and mean entirely another. One day, Google’s actually going to put the kibitz on non-organic bought links; until then, you have some time to get right with God/Google.

I have been using my modest little RNNRUS blog as a laboratory for what does and doesn’t work circa 2018 for Google search.  I’m exploring AMP and AMP for WP and I love it so far (we’ll see if Google both giveth and taketh away). What has worked for me, as a secondary effect, is making sure as many of my new posts are textually linked to relevant older posts. For example, I wrote Patchwork Quilt Stitch Your Marketing Website Tightly Together Using Internal Links and Navigation back on Jul 11, 2017, and the content is very similar.

Whenever I add these elder internal links into the newest posts, it reactivates interest in those older posts. This is good for search. This is good for the site. This is good for you, too. And, very literally, Google takes any and all textual links and indexes them so you can work towards controlling and owning keyword phrases–especially in niche deep down the long tail–yourself within your very own blog!

Good luck and Happy 2018!

Feel free to own the yacht but hire a crew if you’re not yet seaworthy. If you get my drift and want to adopt the yachting lifestyle yourself but either don’t have the mad sailing skills yourself, don’t yet posses a world-class crew, and don’t know yet where to go, then you should give me a call or reach out me by email — so I can help you pilot your vessel now, in the tranquil blue-green shallows of the Caribbean, as well as in the roughest seas and into — as well as out of — the storm.

If you’d like to chat more, call me at +1 (202) 869-3210 Ext 0001  email me, or feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call with me.

Chris Abraham

Chris Abraham, digital strategist and technologist, is a leading expert in digital: search engine optimization (SEO), online relationship management (ORM), Internet privacy, Wikipedia curationsocial media strategy, and online public relations with a focus on blogger outreachinfluencer engagement, and Internet crisis response, with the digital PR and social media marketing agency Gerris digital. [Feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call with me] A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and adviser to the industries' leading firms. Chris Abraham specializes in web technologies, including content marketing, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.  Chris Abraham was named a Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer by Forbes, #1 PR2.0 Influencer by Traackr, and top-10 social media influencers by Marketwire; and, for what it’s worth, Chris has a Klout of 79 the last time he looked. Chris Abraham started doing web development back in 1994, SEO in 1998, blogging in 1999, influencer engagement in 2003, social media strategy in 2005, blogger outreach in 2006, and Wikipedia curation in 2007. Feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call. If you want to know the services that Chris offers check out Services If you want to work with Chris use the Contact Form You're welcome to follow me via Social Media You can learn more about Chris over in About Chris writes a lot so check out the Blog Chris offers webinars so check Events

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