One of the most effective things you can do to help optimize your site for search engines is to link to yourself.

It’s ok. Everybody does it. There’s no reason for us to feel uncomfortable talking about it.

If you’re like me, part of the motivation for self-linking may be that you think a post you wrote a while back was super clever and funny and you hate that anyone would have to miss out on reading it. That’s the narcissistic side of self-linking, and for me that never pans out. It turns out I’m not as funny and clever as I think.

But internal links count with search engines. They are an easy way to build internal Page Rank because they pass Page Rank from the pages doing the linking to the pages linked to.  They are also a great way to establish keyword relevance to a page since you have total control over the anchor text used to create the link. And let’s not forget they are a great way to direct traffic to your “anchor” articles that newcomers to your site may not have seen way back when they were written.

Now, wouldn’t it be nice if all of these links could be created automatically? If you’re using WordPress, there’s a very easy way–the SEO Smart Links Plugin. This plugin is super easy to configure, and it even has nifty options for linking out to other people automatically such as “open in new window” and “don’t pass Page Rank”.

Even if you have to build your page to page links manually, it’s worth the effort for all of the reasons described here. Don’t forget that newcomers to your site may need a little help digging further into what you have to say, and internal links are a great way to give them a hand.Similar Posts:

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Alan Jacobson contacted us about sticky sites. I admit this is more in Sadcox’s area of expertise but I thought I would pass this along to our readers.

According to Wikipedia, “Sticky content refers to content published on a Web site, which has the purpose of getting a user to return to that particular Web site or hold their attention and get them to spend longer periods of time at that site.”

In other words, visitors to sticky sites are more likely to click on internal links than external links, and less likely to visit a different site. This very narrow definition is important, because it can guide us to strategies for making sites stickier.

Now here’s why stickiness should matter to every journalist – especially those who still think they work only for print:

Go read his reasons on why he thinks news organizations need to follow this practice more effectively.Similar Posts:

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