When Internal Linking Becomes External Linking
Link your title or subtitle to your blog post URL. If your blog post feed is syndicated, either voluntarily or not, scraped or not, wouldn’t it help to have a link back to your post at the top of the post in a H1 or H2 tag? Can you see the other benefit to internal linking?
UPDATE 31 Aug 2014: Not all internal linking is a good thing. I recently sent a blogging tip to our VIP List cautioning about the old linking tactic where we’d link to the actual post we were writing using a keyword or keyword phrase. For example, I might use the keyword phrase SEO Linking Tip and hyperlink that phrase to this same page. That’s not only no longer ineffective but kno seems to even hurt your SEO. See the entire email (archived tip).
Don’t Be A Victim Of Your Own Content
We all know the benefits from internal links; now can you see the benefits internal linking gains when your content is taken off site, stolen or not? I’m not saying that low life scraper sites are a good thing, far from it. This kind of thing should be discouraged and even punished. I’m just saying that linking your title to the actual blog post along with internal links will at least give you that much from what otherwise would be just stolen content. Many low life scrapper sites aren’t even linking back to the original post (a pathetic attempt at getting a trackback link) so unless you are actively searching them out, you may never know where your content is being used. Internal linking should automatically trigger that trackback request. By the way, you should NEVER allow those trackbacks.
About Brian D. Hawkins
I have set my WP to default to disallowing any track-back notifications. Track backs were a good concept earlier, but now they are being misused a lot.
Hi Raj, I have to manually approve mine. I do get a few legitimate trackbacks but for the most part they are scraper sites.
i use SEO Smart Links Plug In For Internal Linking.Its Make MY Work Easier.Nice Share 🙂
Thanks Sai, I’ll check that out.
It’s really stupid, people are still indulge in stealing content from other sites or blog even Google Panda update. They can’t get away anywhere with it.
I know Aaron, it’s crazy. I have several Google alerts setup to help keep track of other sites linking or mentioning this site and those scraper sites never show up in the alerts. That tells me they aren’t even getting indexed. The SEO benefit from the title link is probably non-existent in the scraper situation.
Hi Brian,
That is a good idea. I am fed up of seeing my content scraped with no link back to my site. I will definitely try this.
Final thought, is there definitely no problem in term of SEO and the search engines with linking your title to itself?
Cheers
James
Hi James, I’m not an expert but I don’t know of any problems. In fact, some WP theme automatically link the title.
Personally, I add a sub-title using the H2 tag. Most themes have the post title set with the H1 tag.
Hey Brian really great Tip. I really should start doing this more specifically with regards to my theme articles. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I write about a new theme for wordpress. I should really start doing some internal linking to help the older articles rank and get more traffic. Thanks for the reminder man I really have to start implementing this tip on my blog.
You’re doing a great job Brian, I enjoy reading your posts.
Argh! I get so mad when I see my post on other sites with no attribution at all.
The problem I have really found with my stuffed animal site is the scrappers run a program that unlink any links in the post. If the scrappers had just stolen the post and left the affiliate links & internal links, I wouldn’t be so mad but the strip everything and insert their own crappy links to crappy ads.
I still add internal links just so the places that pick up the RSS feed and do not strip all links will at least be attached to my site.
I’ve seen that too Sheryl. And then there have the nerve to hotlink to my images. One day when I have some extra time I’m going to throw them a fast one by changing up the image a little bit 😉
Nice tip. Some themes have the post titles within the single post pages already set as a live link so I think that goes right along with this 😉
Hi Caleb, I have a couple of blogs that do that as well. This theme doesn’t but I bet it would be a simple matter to add it. I’m note sure if I’m going to keep this theme so I’ll just add the links manually for now.
If I’m not mistaken you can goto your single dot php and place an a href tag around the title tags…some themes may have it as h1. You would leave the url blank containing only the h t t p colon with double slashes. Leaving it in this fashion usually links to whatever page the code is on which in this case would be every page containing a post…hopes this helps 😉
Thanks Caleb, I’ll check that out.
Hi Brian,
This is a very clever idea. When I first started my blog I never did any internal linking, but I do now for every post. I have gone back to some older posts to deep link them as well.
Whatever you’re doing Justin, it seems to be working. It’s a great looking site and you have excellent interaction on the blog. Very nice.
I’m not very familiar with internal linking but reading this post gives me a lot of references about this method. Hopefully in the future, i will have a full grasp of understanding regarding this.
For some reason I never got into internal linking even though I know about this for a very long time but didn’t act on it for some reason. But you gave nice tips here, I think I’m gonna start doing this. Though I hate going throw hundredths of posts now…
I don’t blame you Cristian, I probably wouldn’t go back and edit everything either. Mt older posts aren’t linked like that but my future posts will be.
This is a very clever idea. When I first started my blog I never did any internal linking, but I do now for every post. I have gone back to some older posts to deep link them as well.
Brian,
This is fairly ingenious idea. While obviously none of us want our posts to be scrapped, at least this makes it so that the scrapped content provides some little trickle of value back to the original post. Really a pretty cool idea. Thanks for sharing it.
Hi scrapped, I wouldn’t expect any traffic from the scrapper sites but when your posts are syndicated the internal links can make a difference.
I do include internal links in some of my posts but not to the same post like this one. I think this is indeed a great idea. For trackbacks, I also manually approve them. This helps me know when my posts are being reposted or stolen.
Thanks Nikki. Thanks a pretty cool site you are linking to, I’ll check it out.
A good related post plugin works for internal linking as well. However, I don’t see scraper sites as any real benefit for linking to my site. I think they benefit way more from stealing my content than I will ever gat back from one back link.
I agree Richard, maybe I’ll share a nasty little trick I used to play on them when they were hot-linking to my images.
Hey Brian,
Great post here! Thanks for sharing this tip. Definitely an effective tip if you’re looking to improving SEO. I do this a lot now.
Thanks again and keep it up! 🙂
Thanks Pj Zafra
you are exactly right. i always backlink to my contents coz i know others will not do it to me.. have to it on my own
As a SEO expert, online entrepreneur and blogger myself I would to say that internal linking plays a key role in search engine optimization process of an online resource. Just keep in mind that if you perform internal linking for a website in the right way you can achieve SEO improvement very quickly. When it comes to keywords with low level of competition it is possible to achieve top search engine rankings even without link development.
Thanks Terje.
good post people should back link their content so that they could track that where they are stand thanks.
There are always going to be webmasters out using shortcuts like scrapper software instead of spending time building legitimate links. I rarely see any trackbacks that are truly legit.
I get a few Charles, but you are right, the vast majority are spam.
It’s kinda irritating to have my post on other’s benefit.I’m using a plugin for Internal linking, quite working well.
Hi Dhanna, Which plugin are you using?
People who don’t have any creative ideas in their mind always looking for these sort of stupid things. I don’t think that really does matter for the people who are creative.
Hi Dia, I’m not sure what is stupid, internal linking or are you referring to the scraper sites?
Makes sense. Benefit from scrappers sounds just clever. Will try this from now on…
Hi Clemens, just to be clear, I don’t think there is any benefit from low life scraper sites.
Good tip, thanks. I’m going to check my WP settings to make sure this is a default. I didn’t know this was such a problem.
Internal linking can also score you points for a good on-page SEO. It can be very helpful for your site.
Exactly right Robin.
Yes I too now use seo smart links to handle most of my internal linking.
When my site was small with only 20 or so pages it was easy to do but now that it is over 400 pages/posts I rely on that wp plugin to do it all for me.
It is really amazingat how many do not understand the importance of the H! H2 tags whether you get a link from them or not they are still valuable to have for onpage SEO.
Dont worry about the scrapers taking some of your content in the last six months I have had two people take nearly a complete site 40 plus posts and pages including all my images..
Only realized when I saw my PR vanish.
Reported to Google and their host company, needless to say both sites are now gone.
Hey Brian,
Just read your reply about the nasty little trick when people hotlink to your images I have a good solution for that also where I changed the image to say something else which was not at all pleasant.
Which I thought would get the webmasters attention however it did not and stayed there for all to see until their hosting company closed the site down.
Hi Ron, I’ve done the same thing, both with scraper sites and with sites hot-linking to my images. I had one site that had my image saying “Bandwidth Thief” on it for months. It was actually a little satisfying. 😉
Hi Brian,
I use the SEO Pressor plugin which reminds me to do internal linking. This comes in real handy for me because I have so many guest bloggers too. If they haven’t done any linking, I’ll see it right away. Thanks for the hot blog tip!
Hi Ileane, I almost bought SEO Pressor but I had an issue with their promo video so I decided to wait. I believe the two plugins are very similar.
Youâve done a great job explaining internal links. Itâs a little bit hard to figure out what methods work better than others. Itâs a very time consuming process, so the techniques you recommend helps streamline the process. Thanks!
Thanks Joseph, I appreciate that.
That’s actually a great way to look at it Satrap, voting for our self. Very nice.
I agree with Raj. I used to allow trackback, but unfortunately its becoming too much of a headache for me, so I simply disabled it.
Non the less, you make a great point Brian. Internal link building has far bigger impact in SEO that many of us think. I have seen things (close to miracle) happen with good internal link building.
I mean, Google and other SEs value links because its like a vote. A link to your post from another site basically tells Google “here is a vote for this guy on this subject”. So, obviously it would be beneficial to tell Google that you, yourself do believe you are an authority on the subject as well.
I am sorry, I couldn’t really explain it well. But, you get the point.
I never approve those trackbacks . This is the reason I alway approve comments manually so that any of such trackbacks cannot be published untill I approve. thanks for the post mate
Hi Brian,
There are no stupid ideas, there are only a rethinking and development of various methods. I will try this link method directly.
thanks for these tips i try.