Our Internal Linking Guide to a 25% Traffic Increase in 1 Month!

The field of SEO is constantly changing. This is why sustained growth and stable high rankings can challenge even well-established sites. 

This case study is about a 5-year-old technology content site with a Domain Rating (DR) of 54. The site had strong rankings and steady traffic but it dropped over the past few months. Adding new content regularly and major link-building efforts did not improve the drop. 

SEO is long-term, and quick results are very rare. But, using our smart internal linking strategies we achieved noticeable traffic growth for a specific category of articles within just a month. This case study includes our exact strategies and the results achieved. 

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‍Background

Our technology content site has a solid reputation in the industry. The website provides high-quality content to its readers. Over the past five years, it has built a strong backlink profile and consistently ranked well for numerous keywords. 

However, in recent months, we noticed that the site's traffic had become stable, showing no signs of growth despite continuous content updates and active link-building efforts.

The Challenge

The main challenge we faced was the traffic plateau. We needed to find a way to increase traffic, particularly to a specific category of articles that we believed had the potential to attract more visitors. 

Traditional link-building strategies were in place, but they didn't seem to move the needle as expected. We realized we needed to rethink our approach and explore other avenues to drive growth.

The Strategy: Leveraging Internal Links

Internal linking is often an underutilized aspect of SEO, yet it can have a powerful impact on a site's performance. Internal links help search engines understand the structure of a website, distribute link equity, and improve the user experience by guiding visitors to related content. 

Here's how we implemented our internal linking strategy:

‍1. Audit Existing Internal Links

Our first step was to conduct a complete audit of the site's existing internal links. We used tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs to identify all internal links and analyze their effectiveness. This audit helped us understand the current linking structure and identify areas for improvement.

During this audit, we found that the "how-to" category had the fewest internal links pointing to it. Despite this, the articles in this category ranked decently and brought in considerable traffic. 

This indicated that we had topical authority for these kinds of keywords, and they were performing well even without strong internal link support. This discovery highlighted the potential for even greater performance with a more robust internal linking strategy.

2. Identify High-Value Pages

Next, we filtered out the top 20 pages from the "how-to" category. 

These pages were selected based on their potential to rank well and their current traffic performance. We then integrated them well internally within the category by creating links between these pages, ensuring a strong internal linking structure. 

Additionally, we strategically placed a couple of internal links pointing to these high-value pages from other pages on the site that had higher link juice, thus passing on more authority and helping to boost their rankings.

3. Create a Strategic Linking Plan

We then created a strategic plan for internal linking, focusing on several key elements:

• Diversified Anchor Text: We used a variety of descriptive and relevant keywords in our anchor text to help search engines understand the context of the linked pages better.
• Clustered Internal Linking: We established well-defined and relevant internal links within the "how-to" category, ensuring that these pages supported each other effectively.
• Pruning Less Relevant Links: We removed less relevant and repeated anchor links to streamline the link structure and enhance the link equity distribution.
• Prioritizing Link Placement: We ensured that the most important internal links were placed in the top sections of articles, while less critical links were positioned lower down. This not only improved the user experience but also signaled the priority of these links to search engines.

By carefully implementing these strategies, we created a robust internal linking structure that maximized the potential of our high-value pages.

4. Implementing the Plan

Once the plan was in place, we began implementing the internal links. We made sure to update the site's sitemap and submitted it to Google Search Console to facilitate faster indexing of the new links.

5. Monitoring and Adjusting

After implementing the internal linking strategy, we closely monitored the site's performance using Google Analytics and Ahrefs. We tracked changes in traffic, keyword rankings, and user engagement metrics. 

Based on the data, we made necessary adjustments to optimize the internal links further.

Results

The results of our internal linking strategy were impressive. Within a month, we observed a significant increase in traffic to the target category of articles. Here are some key metrics:

• Traffic Growth: The target category experienced more than a 25% increase in organic traffic within the first month.

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• Improved Rankings: Several high-value pages within the category moved up in the search engine rankings, with some breaking into the top 10 positions for their primary keywords.

• Enhanced User Engagement: User engagement metrics, such as time on page and pages per session, showed improvement, indicating that visitors were finding the internal links useful and exploring more content on the site.

Conclusion

This case study demonstrates the power of smart internal linking in driving traffic growth and improving search engine rankings. By conducting a thorough audit, identifying high-value pages, creating a strategic linking plan, and closely monitoring the results, we were able to achieve significant improvements in a short period. 

Internal linking is an often overlooked opportunity to improve SEO performance for any site looking to break through a traffic drop.