The best internal linking practices

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Nebojsa Djukic: Hey guys,
  
  Here is a question about the best internal linking practices. Let's say we have the following pages:
  
  - Home page is A
  - an inner page is B and
  - another inner page is C
  
  We know that A -> B -> C linking is ideal. ;
  
  Is it bad if C page links back to the page B?
  
  A -> B <=> C
  
  Two inner pages links to each other and the home page links to one of them. ;
  
  How this can affect the performances of the page C in SE?
• 
  Dmitry Grunt: If you have 3 pages, its not important how to link them. Main menu and breadcrumbs do all linking.
• 
  Dave Elliott: If its a relevant link why would it matter?
• 
  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: What makes you so sure that A -> B -> C is the ideal approach?
• 
  Nebojsa Djukic: +Micah Fisher-Kirshner ;There are many articles on that subject, take a look on this one: ;http://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
  
  By the way, I'm asking this question because I have a plugin that automatically convert particular keywords to hyperlinks. So I have internal links on page C that leads to page B.
  
  C pages are landing pages where I expect most convertible visitors and I'm looking to rank them in SE. If these links to B pages can decrease their performances on any way I'll remove them.
• 
  Dmitry Grunt: +Nebojsa Djukic ;_plugin that automatically convert particular keywords to hyperlinks_
  On my projects i used text blocks (customer info e.g.) with one keyword link to promoted page. But convert bulk keywords to links looks like spam.
  
  PS I tested plugin that parsed search queries and automatically put internal links on pages.
  I used it one year with no result.
• 
  Dmitry Grunt: +Dave Elliott ;i think need more then 1-3 linked pages to see effect, maybe 100+.
• 
  Nebojsa Djukic: +Dmitry Grunt ;It's a website about accommodation in many popular cities. B pages are countries, C pages are cities. For example one of B pages is Germany and C pages are Berlin, Frankfurt, Dortmund... Mentioned keywords are not commercial, but country names. Plugin convert country names to links (one per page). So if there is word "Germany" on C page it is converted to a link which points to my-website.com/germany/ ;
• 
  Dmitry Grunt: +Nebojsa Djukic ;i think if you have many C pages and link them to B page from human readable text it can work. But not all "Berlin" keyword in text, just one on first or second paragraph of text. ;
• 
  Nebojsa Djukic: +Dmitry Grunt ;Yes, of course, there is only one link. ;
  
  I asked myself why should I at all link from these C pages to B pages? I expect my visitors to click on conversion buttons, not to browse several pages (although that could be good for bounce rate etc)... I'm linking from B to C to pass the link juice, that is obvious but not sure if there are any benefits of linking back from C to B?
• 
  Dmitry Grunt: http://goo.gl/MCcKOU
  On this picture i tried to show best link structure on my opinion. Best to use on online stores, advertise boards, catalogs and so on. Red arrows its internal links from page content, not navigation.
• 
  Nebojsa Djukic: Thank you +Dmitry Grunt ;
  
  Yes that is the structure I have right now. Perhaps I should leave it as it is. ;
• 
  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: +Nebojsa Djukic: Note that that's an assumption from Moz and that you used A, B, C, not specifying they are sub-categories or not of each other, so ideal structure may be something else (as some things are more equal than others so to speak). Your note of B = countries, C = cities means C should mostly be under B rather than linking back to C.
  
  I'd go with the Wikipedia model more myself, where you might want to consider that people might stumble in looking for a different city of the same name (say the Berlin in the US instead of Germany), so some disambiguation here or there might be of use. Also, helps to push flow across different pages to have a more random walk feel (a blog post, a forum thread, etc).
• 
  Nebojsa Djukic: +Micah Fisher-Kirshner ;thank you for the reply.
  
  What do you guys think about using the same anchor text on many internal pages (all these links points to one page)? One of my pages is about accommodation in London and many (up to 50) subpages about accommodation in ;London's neighborhoods. Each of these pages about ;neighborhoods have a link to London page with the same anchor text (London). So there is 50 pages on my website that links through the same anchor text to one page. ;
  
  Is this dangerous? Should I decrease the amount of exact match anchor text?
• 
  Dmitry Grunt: +Nebojsa Djukic ;i think ancors with variations will work better. And can get more long tail traffic.
• 
  Nebojsa Djukic: +Dmitry Grunt ;I agree and already working on that.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:47:12 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/the_best_internal_linking_practices +Nebojsa Djukic
  
  The cuetimes listed on this page are functional while the live broadcast continues and also once Youtube has finished processing the public broadcast. Processing time varies between 6-24 hours. During this period the clip is viewable in full but the cuetimes cannot be relied on.
  
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