Internal Linking – Confused & Scared – Please Help!!!

[Obosh]

Brothers,
I need experts’ help here. Recently (6th June) I launched my first website(NameStall.com). I took a lot of care and it took 4 months to finish the website and submitted my website to 4 forums for review. In one forum a guy with 500+ forum posts PMed me and told

“Your content is unique but your internal linking will kill your SEO. Google doesn’t like this kind of internal links.”

Then I send him 4 PMs and asked - him what was wrong and what my mistakes were - but never got any reply from that guy.

Guys I am really very scared now. This guy has more than 500 forum posts, so he must know something I don’t.

This is my first website and I spent 4 month to develop all the tools and just launched it. I concentrated on developing tools and I am not a SEO guy. I just did some basic SEO like Meta & internal links (I heard internal links help you to rank better).

Please please please brother help me out here. what did I wrong with my internal linking? Or what is the safest or best practice to build your internal linking. Or who do you link your website pages? I am dying to know what did I do wrong or what should I do now.

Please help me out here guys.

[ralph.m]

To be honest, I don't know (or care) a lot about SEO, but from a quick look at some of your pages, I'd agree that you have way too many internal links. I don't know how that will affect your SEO, but the links will be annoying to users. Many of the links are unnecessary—such as multiple links to your home page in the same sentence. They are annoying, too, as they are very misleading. That's overkill that's clearly focussed on gaming the search engines at the expense of your users. Always think of your users first.

[Obosh]

To be honest, I don't know (or care) a lot about SEO, but from a quick look at some of your pages, I'd agree that you have way too many internal links. I don't know how that will affect your SEO, but the links will be annoying to users. Many of the links are unnecessary—such as multiple links to your home page in the same sentence. They are annoying, too, as they are very misleading. That's overkill that's clearly focussed on gaming the search engines at the expense of your users. Always think of your users first.

:man now i m really very scared...
should i remove all my links and wait for better answers?

[ralph.m]

Well, my advice to you is to go through the text and eliminate any links that are not useful for your users. You will know which ones those are—such as those I described above. Useful links are not rocket science. The point is to stop thinking about search engines. Offer useful, quality content, and your efforts will be recongized and appreciated by search engines.

[deanaov]

To make things right, limit your internal links to three in each post or in your case, "limit of 150 links per page" - this rule is according to SEOmoz. it's also important to follow a "format for a correctly formatted internal link." A legal internal link follows the basic structure, which consists of a start link tag, link referral location, the visible text of a link or anchor text and closure of a link tag. It's also helpful to understand the rules of internal linking according to Google Webmaster Tools. Truth is; internal linking is not algebra. It's not even rocket science. Simply take into consideration of deleting some of your internal links when it appears unnatural and irrelevant for the visitors.

For your benefit, I have copy and pasted the rule of Internal linking and this is what Google has to say: "The number of internal links pointing to a page is a signal to search engines about the relative importance of that page. If an important page does not appear in this list, or if a less important page has a relatively large number of internal links, you should consider reviewing your internal link structure."

[Obosh]

To make things right, limit your internal links to three in each post or in your case, "limit of 150 links per page" - this rule is according to SEOmoz. it's also important to follow a "format for a correctly formatted internal link." A legal internal link follows the basic structure, which consists of a start link tag, link referral location, the visible text of a link or anchor text and closure of a link tag. It's also helpful to understand the rules of internal linking according to Google Webmaster Tools. Truth is; internal linking is not algebra. It's not even rocket science. Simply take into consideration of deleting some of your internal links when it appears unnatural and irrelevant for the visitors.

For your benefit, I have copy and pasted the rule of Internal linking and this is what Google has to say: "The number of internal links pointing to a page is a signal to search engines about the relative importance of that page. If an important page does not appear in this list, or if a less important page has a relatively large number of internal links, you should consider reviewing your internal link structure."

Thank you very much brother….i am not sure what whether my internal link structure is in correct format or not…..too many thinks to consider and digest I guess….and I think I need some more time to understand the whole structure described in SEOmoz.…

"The number of internal links pointing to a page is a signal to search engines about the relative importance of that page. If an important page does not appear in this list, or if a less important page has a relatively large number of internal links, you should consider reviewing your internal link structure."

But this time I tried to focus on your above quote and tried my best to avoid all unimportant and useless links…tried to keep most relevant and important links for my visitors…wanted to guide my users correctly without targeting search engine….hope it did it correctly this time….

Wish me luck…I need it…

Thank you once again for your time….

[TechnoBear]

Well, my advice to you is to go through the text and eliminate any links that are not useful for your users. You will know which ones those are—such as those I described above. Useful links are not rocket science. The point is to stop thinking about search engines. Offer useful, quality content, and your efforts will be recongized and appreciated by search engines.

I'd agree with ralph.m's advice here. The alternative, if you really think that all your links are useful and you don't want to remove them, is to mark them as "nofollow". This will make clear to the search engines that the purpose of your links is not to manipulate them, but to assist your users.

[Obosh]

I'd agree with ralph.m's advice here. The alternative, if you really think that all your links are useful and you don't want to remove them, is to mark them as "nofollow". This will make clear to the search engines that the purpose of your links is not to manipulate them, but to assist your users.

thank you very very much Techno Bear once again for your valuable time for me.
i think i did and used some unless and unimportant keywords and anchor text for my links...so deleted most of those pointless keywords and kept only most important one...did not even keep any nofollow link....but i really like the nofollow internal link idea....

it took a whole day to reorganize all the content and anchor and i hope i did every thing correctly this time...

thank you brother....

[Obosh]

Well, my advice to you is to go through the text and eliminate any links that are not useful for your users. You will know which ones those are—such as those I described above. Useful links are not rocket science. The point is to stop thinking about search engines. Offer useful, quality content, and your efforts will be recongized and appreciated by search engines.

Thank you very much dear Ralph. I have reorganized my whole internal links. Reduced around 30% of my internal links and used new anchor text. Hope this time I have done it correctly…

This time I tried to use important and useful keywords as anchor text and probably will be useful links for visitors…

Though I am still confused whether I did it correctly or not but this time I am felling much better….

[seotrafficsearch]

Well, internal linking cannot be harmful unless you are targeting only a certain page from all other pages of your site. You should not place more than 1-2 internal links on one page. And coming to SEO's perspective, mere placement of meta tags and descriptions cannot helpS you out. You need to broaden your SEO strategies.