Which Way of Interlinking Do You Prefer?

[smithy]

I see 3 main ways.

I mostly use a combination of 1 and 2 but rarely 3. At least not a list of posts at the end of an article for 3.

1. Within paragraphs

Likely the most optimal way given the context surrounding it, but not always possible in a way that makes sense.

2. In between paragraphs

The benefit to this is that exact match anchor text can be used.

Related: Post 1

3. At the end of a post

Still within the post body but at the end of the post.

See Also:
Post 1
Post 2
Post 3

Separately, there's also related posts after the post. If the the topic is large enough to have enough supporting articles, I use tags and noindex them. Otherwise I just go off a category or sub-category basis.

How do you guys do it?

 

[bernard]

Also Read: One weird trick to interlinking

All those you mention are fine, but my interlinking is based on wanting to get people to actually click and read more pages. I also do interlinking by keywords for new pages.

 

[Ryuzaki]

"Within Paragraphs" is going to likely send the most relevancy, due to the surrounding text, it being contextual, and using natural but targeted anchor texts. One might wonder if it sends more page rank this way too since it's a part of the main content and not an aside (even one within the main content). I'd say this is the standard and gets the most engaged and hot traffic clicking through. You can rank articles with this method alone if your site is juicy enough.

"In Between Paragraphs" is something I'd use simply as clickbait. It's easy to get eyeballs on the links, and then if the title of the post you're linking there is "baity" enough, you could really improve your on-site metrics. If you push traffic to the right pages, say with a high RPM for display ads (something that requires low engagement) you could slurp up some extra money.

"At the End of a Post" is something I do when I know the site is going to be gigantic in terms of number of posts and there's going to end up being a deeper click depth happening with no way of avoiding it. It also helps spread page rank around, especially when all articles matter and you're not trying to direct page rank to specific pages. It raises the tide so all of the boats do better.

 

[Grey]

This may be a dumb question, but should interlinking be tracked? Should I be able to look up (in a spreadsheet, for example) which pages are linking to and from other pages?

 

[Cash Builder]

I use a mixture of all three. In paragraphs where it makes sense, in between paragraphs where it seems logical for the user to go next, and also when I want to break up a large paragraph/section. I also have a few internal links at the end of the page to reduce the bounce rate.

This may be a dumb question, but should interlinking be tracked? Should I be able to look up (in a spreadsheet, for example) which pages are linking to and from other pages?

I used to track every internal link in a spreadsheet, but it quickly becomes tedious. When my site got bigger I was spending 10 - 15 minutes interlinking each post, and I figured it was not worth doing.

I still spend time on interlinking, just not documenting everything. There are tools available that will tell you where each page is linked from, which avoids having orphaned pages.

 

[JamaicanMoose]

I do #3 and dump them all at the end of the post in a pre-determined list based on the post tag. My sites are all hundreds or thousands of posts. Contextually interlinking would be god awful and nearly impossible to manage at that scale. It's lazy, for sure, but I haven't seen any negative impact on earnings after I started doing that instead of contextual interlinking.

 

[Cash Builder]

I do #3 and dump them all at the end of the post in a pre-determined list based on the post tag. My sites are all hundreds or thousands of posts. Contextually interlinking would be god awful and nearly impossible to manage at that scale. It's lazy, for sure, but I haven't seen any negative impact on earnings after I started doing that instead of contextual interlinking.

I agree. It's easier to manage when a site is small but when it gets bigger, it's impossible to manage. It's all about time management.

When I post a new article I'll do a site search on Google with the keyword of the article I've just posted:

site:mysite.com "keyword"

and use a selection of returned articles for linking to/from. I figure if Google thinks those pages are relevant to the article, then that's what I will use. It's much easier than just guessing what is relevant, and easier than consulting a spreadsheet for every internal link.

 

[bernard]

The Linkwhisper plugin is supposed to help interlink huge sites.

 

[Cash Builder]

I tried Linkwhisper but I wasn't too keen on it. It saved a lot of time, but I wasn't happy with some of the suggestions and could see no easy way to change the anchor text from within the plugin section on each article.

 

[zelch]

I'm loving linkwhisper. Saving us TONS of time.

 

[Cash Builder]

I'm loving linkwhisper. Saving us TONS of time.

I can see they’ve update it a few times since I last used it, might give it another try.