Link Optimization in WordPress

One of Google’s most important ranking factors has always been links. We differentiate between internal and external links. External, ie outgoing links or links from external providers are just as good as internal links. However, since we do not want to lose our visitors and SEO power to external sites, we have integrated a rule system in our WordPress SEO plugin that allows outgoing links to be opened in a new tab and validated by a “nofollow” statement.

Settings

1. Let external, ie outgoing links open automatically in the new window, so that users who click on them do not jump off your website (“lose”). You can also invalidate external links by default (“do not follow” means, In English: “nofollow”). & nbsp; This devaluation should be done primarily for paid links that you incorporate in your WordPress content. We also recommend it for & nbsp; Link collections such as. Industry or partner directories.
2. You can limit the rules to links of specific content types. For example, the cancellation can be applied to all pages, but you can omit blog contributions.
3. Links with real value to your visitors should not be discounted, as they show Google and the linked pages that you do not value them. Because of this, you can define more or less exceptions to which invalidation is not applied.

Internal links

In addition to the settings of our SEO plugin, you should also set at least one internal link to a listing page per URL (in addition to the menu) to push your offers more. We call the principle in SEO “Link Juice Optimization”:

By avoiding unnecessary links and, for example, summarizing legal pages such as the imprint, the privacy policy and the terms and conditions on one URL, or directing more links to strategically important pages in the content, you can channel more “link power” to your important pages.

Important: The name of the menu item for such legal pages must nevertheless remain absolutely clear. Look how we do it in our footer. Using metadata optimization, you can exclude such SEO-technically irrelevant pages from indexing in Google.

Incoming Links

Even today, links from external websites are a very strong SEO success factor. Begin your link building first with a Google My Business listing – by the way, other general business directories are not needed. But special business directories could be helpful for your reputation building.

You can also build “authority” on Google by linking to partners and friends. In order to get really good links of the press and influencers, but first you need really good content and ideally already a lot of experience in online communication.

If you want to check which links from external sites give you the most visitors, go to Google Analytics on Acquisition> All Views> References. Apart from Google My Business, only those links are really good these days, which also lead to new visitors. Links from general directories and link directories bring you practically nothing but annoyance for your SEO.