SEO: Navigation Part 3- Keyword Mapping
Keyword mapping. Some people call it internal links. Others call it inside links. Whatever the term you choose, the practice is becoming more and more popular in the SEO world.
Everywhere you turn, SEO professionals are buzzing about it these days. It used to be that keyword mapping was just a way to get your visitors from one page to the next. But, as Google placed increasing weight on the anchor text variable in their algorithm, linking structures took on an additional role. It’s assumed that when you click on a link in a site, if it says “keyword mapping” you’re going to wind up on a page that’s all about keyword mapping. The blue, underlined hyperlink text or anchor text, is a determining factor that contributes to the landing pages overall SEO health.
Look at it this way…If you have a site that has 100 pages, and you have one page that’s all about keyword mapping, or internal linking if you prefer, you can essentially help that page to rank better in Google’s search results by just mentioning keyword mapping on some of your other pages within your site. Then link from that reference to the keyword mapping page and you have just helped that page to rank better when people are searching for keyword mapping.
This post is supposed to be just about navigation and internal links, but for those of you who have just had the light bulb come on when I described the value of proper anchor text, you can utilize the same methodology when getting other sites to link to your site. Rather than asking to trade links with a link that says “click here,” you can actually benefit yourself by getting the other site to link to your with the phrase “keyword mapping.” Using that phrase increases the liklihood of your site being ranked well for the term “keyword mapping” rather than just ranked better for the phrase “click here.” Who would want to rank at the top of the search engines for the phrase “click here?” Well, actually Adobe has that distinction. But, they didn’t do anything to get ranked well for that phrase. They just naturally had millions of web masters link to their site with that phrase so that users could download the free Adobe Acrobat player. That just underscores the importance of choosing the right words to use as you create links inside your site and out. If you choose words poorly, your site may rank well for unimportant terms while your competition ranks well for your most desired phrases.
Chadd Bryant
