Wherever I go, whoever I talk to, the question on everyone's mind is, "How do I get my website to the top listing in Google?" While most are hoping to understand the magic recipe hidden behind lock and key at Google, the truth is, there are lots of simple things to increase your website ranking and subsequently website traffic. These things are not hard, but they take focused effort and diligence to incorporate. A secret formula may seem like the answer, but I believe, a slow and steady strategy is better by far. When optimizing your site, my best tip is to be purposeful and cover the basics well.

One overlooked basic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is internal link building. Internal linking is just as important as external linking when it comes to search spiders crawling and categorizing your site. How you link your site internally is important because your links tell the major search engines what information is relevant and most important. This helps them to rank your site based on content and not on interpretation. In other words, the more internal links the better your site will be categorized.

A great example of an effective use of this is Wikipedia. Every time a keyword appears within the Wikipedia site it links back to its own page about that topic. Wikipedia uses internal linking site-wide, it is not uncommon to find 3 to 4 times more internal links than external links. While a user's curiosity may send him into a wonderland rabbit trail, the idea behind this strategy has certainly paid off. Wikipedia dominates organic search results.

Your opinion of what information is most important in your site really matters for SEO. Internal links help Google decide what you think is important. Google then utilizes your internal linking to rank accordingly. The use of site menus, breadcrumb links, related stories modules and links within page content will help them determine your organic ranking. While this may be easy for a small semi-static site to maintain manually, a content driven site such as a blog becomes cumbersome when faced with this dilemma. So in order to simplify the entire process I did the research and found a wonderful little plugin that dynamically creates these links based on the defined keywords.

Here's how this plugin works; the author or site owner defines certain keywords and redirects for those keywords links. For instance, if my article was about social networking and I wanted every instance of the phrase "social networking" within my site to link back to my article, I would define this keyword to be directed to my article about social networking. The beauty of this is I can incorporate this policy site-wide without searching through every page and manually making the link. The opposite is also true, it means that I can turn off or expire this keyword link site-wide with little work as well. Another benefit is that my default content management editor settings overwrite the plugin settings. So if I have an instance where I have already defined the link within my article, then that link takes precedence over the auto internal linking plugin.

Another important way to use internal linking within your website is to take advantage of another great plugin that links to related articles on your website based on keywords. One of the best ways to keep people on your site is to give them the information they are seeking. If the search engine brings them to a page based upon their keyword search, then even if that landing page isn't exactly what they were looking for, a related articles module will display related items. Since these pages are easily accessible, your chance of keeping the reader on your site is far greater. Displaying links based on keywords, helps with your internal linking strategy as well as your bounce rate.

All of these things when strategically implemented will increase your search engine placement and traffic. Being purposeful and tactical in execution is as good as knowing Google's secret recipe. So remember the need for internal linking when you blog, build or edit your website.

Note: If you would like more information about our internal linking and the plugins discussed in this article, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , we are happy to help!