TYoung Systems

Call it as you want: plug-in, extension or add-on, its purpose remains the same: to make whatever software you are using more feature-rich. There are a lot of great plug-ins, but the ones we’re going to focus on are the plug-ins that will enhance your SEO efforts.

We’re not going to get terribly technical so enjoy checking the plugins below and use the ones that fit you best.

Along the years, we’ve searched, tested and tried lots of plugins. The following SEO plugins will surely help you achieve better SEO results but you need to choose the right ones for you.

If you know any other SEO plugins that should be listed here, please let us know in the comments section below. 

WordPress

SEO Yoast
SEO Framework
Broken Link Checkr
All in One Schema Rich Snippets
Rank Math
XML Sitemap
All in One SEO Pack
SEOPress

Magento

SEO Suite Ultimate
Free Magento SEO by Creare
SEO Suite
Canonical URLs Magento Extension by FME Addons
Advanced SEO by Activo
Advanced Sitemap

Joomla!

SEO Generator
EF SEO
JoomSEF
Tag Meta
sh404SEF

Wix

Wix SEO wiz

Shopify

Plug in SEO
Reload SEO

Weebly

Weebly Integrated SEO plugin

Squarespace

Squarespace SEO 

Extra – Chrome

MozBar
SEO quake
Keywords Everywhere
WooRank
SimilarWeb
SEO Peek

 
WordPress
 
1. SEO Yoast

SEO Yoast is probably one of the most used and most popular WordPress SEO plugins being installed by over five million websites. One of the best features of SEO Yoast is the XML sitemap management which allows you to easily create your sitemaps. You don’t have to code and then fix it if something is not working so you avoid any of the headaches. 

For content lovers, there’s the content optimization snippet preview which allows you to add your keyword, meta description and meta title to preview them as they appear on search. Besides that, you get tips and indications whether your content needs more on-site optimization, or de-optimization in case of keyword stuffing. 

Moreover, Yoast SEO helps you identify and avoid duplicate content so you don’t get penalized by Google. 

 
2. SEO Framework

SEO Framework is another great plugin for small businesses rather than big companies. The interface looks like it’s integrated into WordPress, so it delivers fast SEO solutions and it’s time efficient, leaving no room for errors. Not to mention that interacting with it feels very natural. 

The fact that it has an AI built makes it very interesting and it automatically optimizes your pages. That way, it gives you lots of possibilities to create a better website. It comes preconfigured but also gives you the option to change any settings you want. You can improve the search results and the social presence with SEO Framework. 

 
3. Broken Link Checker

In the WordPress plugins gallery, there are a lot of options for all sorts of issues and problems that you have for your website and Broken Link Checker is another example. The plugin, as the name point out, checks your broken links.

After you have installed it, the plugin will parse your whole website and show you how many broken links you have, similar to the screenshot above. You can find the list of broken links in a new tab of the WP admin panel – Tools -> Broken Links. Whenever you find broken links, there are some actions you can take: Edit link, Unlink, Not broken, Dismiss.

 
4. All in One Schema Rich Snippets

All In One Schema Rich Snippets can be used to improve the appearance in search engine results with rich snippets. The plugin can be used at its best for schema implementations, such as Recipes, Events, People, Products, Articles and so on.

Using the plugin will give more accurate information to the search engines about your website, help your results stand out in SERP and give you a competitive advantage. 

 
5. Rank Math

Rank Math is a free WordPress plugin that has lots of cool features for every business. It is developed by MyThemeShop, one of the most famous WordPress theme providers. This WordPress SEO plugin helps you optimize your content and outrank your competitors. One of the coolest things is that it supports schema-based themes and also AMP pages.

With Rank Math you can check lots of errors and get a lot of information for your website:

easy setup using the step-by-step installation and configuration wizard;
rank tracking option to follow your keywords positions and LSI keyword integration;
advanced website analysis section to spot any errors that need to be fixed;
a modular framework so you can have complete control of your website;
smart redirection manager;
40 monitor that identifies and fixes any 404 pages;
internal linking management and suggestion;
Google Search Console Integration;
Easy configuration for rich snippets and so many more.

 
6. XML Sitemap

As the name says it, XML Sitemap was specially designed to create XML sitemaps that will help search engines to better index your site. It works best with most search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com. The great thing about it is the fact that it notifies all the search engines every time you post new content or update any existing content. 

 
7. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack is an easy WordPress plugin for beginners and for small businesses that want to improve their website and increase their rankings, but it also has advanced features and an API for developers. 

This WordPress plugin will help you with the following:

XML Sitemap support;
Google AMP support;
Google Analytics Integration;
Webmaster verification options for Google, Bing, and Pinterest;
Automatically generated meta tags;
Built-in API and compatibility with a lot of other plugins;
advanced canonical URLs and many more. 

 
8. SEOPress

It is one of simple fast and very powerful SEO plugin for the WordPress user. You can find the loads of features that you can easily enable or disable as per required. You can find the premium version adds from this plugin.

 
Jenelia DC

Editor & Content team @copyproblogger

SEOPress has lots of features and Jenelia shares some of the most important ones:

Discover your suggestion for your content through Google’s suggestion.
Fine tune with a content analysis tool.
You can track Google event and traffic from the dashboard.
It is very easy to create and manage 301, 302 and 307 redirects.
You will be able to check the performance of your site with Google page speed.
It allows you to implement Google structured data, such as product, article, event, local business, review, video, course, recipe and so on.

 
Magento
 
9. SEO Suite Ultimate

SEO Suite Ultimate extension is a comprehensive solution for Magento websites that want to improve their rankings and traffic. Plus it offers support for features that are not a part of the default Magento setup. It is installed by the team of experts from the plugin.

Enriched with lots of features to offer a valuable user experience, the SEO extension is developed taking into consideration lots of advantages:

automated SEO templates for product and category pages to make it easier for the user to add information.
solve duplicate content issues.
easily implement hreflang tags for any language and regional URLs.
add rich snippets in SERP to let search engines understand your pages better.
correct 301 implementation.
customize XML sitemaps and more.

 
10. Free Magento SEO by Creare

CreareSEO extension was created for Magento to help users solve their SEO problems by using a set of smart tools designed for them.

The Magento SEO plugin helps with:

store management: the extension will add an SEO checklist page to your store admin so you can see if they are configured correctly.
duplicate content: information to prevent it.
structured data: the platform will show you breadcrumbs, store information and social media channels.
metadata templates for product, category page titles and description.

Google integrations: you’ll get a list of Google services that are not integrated into your Magento 2 platform.

 
11. SEO Suite

SEO Suite is a free extension designed by Emipro Technologies. The plugin spots any aspects that need to be fixed, such as duplicate content issues allowing you to manage dynamic templates, improve indexation and even help you out with internal linking.

It solves the most important features and has lots of benefits such as:

Add rel=next/prev tag.
Add canonical tag for domain, image alt tag, advanced metadata.
Manage Twitter cards and Facebook Opengraph tags.
Create friendly URLs.
Add advanced breadcrumbs.
Use Adwords and Analytics integration.
Create XML sitemap.
Check missing meta tags.
Multiple store support and more.

 
12. Canonical URLs Magento Extension by FME Addons

Magento Canonical URLs is a free extension that adds ‘rel’ canonical URL to the head of your web pages and also manually sets custom canonical links for products. The extension helps the search engines select the most relevant pages for specific searches.

Plus, it helps you detect and fix duplicate content issues and it provides correct URL from databases for your CMS pages.

 
13. Advanced SEO by Activo

Advanced SEO by Activo is an SEO plugin for Magento 2 that adds the Organization schema.org rich snippet to the homepage of your store. We all know how critical it is to have an SEO advantage in your store so the plugin brings a lot of features to improve your store ranking and visibility.

There’s nothing too complicated, the extension guides you and it’s a great fit for your online store.

 
14. Advanced Sitemap

The Advanced Sitemap is an SEO plugin designed for Magento 1. There’s also an option for Magento 2, named Ultimate SEO Optimizer. Advanced Sitemap, as the name says it, is an extension that generates the sitemap automatically. It is very simple, you’ll have to install it and then generate how many Sitemaps you’d like. 

It has lots of customizations included, which allows you to set the priority and the frequency for each field, even for homepage, to set the title for sitemap, to add more links to the sitemap plus many others. 

 
Joomla!
 
15. SEO Generator

SEO-Generator is an SEO plugin for Joomla that generates keywords and descriptions for your webpages by pulling text from the title and/or the content. The plugin has an effective system to include the keyword and description in the articles. It requires you to review them and add only those that you want.

In the admin mode, on the right side of the article, you’ll see a section placed under “Metadata Information”, named “Plugin Parameter” where you get keyword ideas. In the screenshot below there’s an example.

SEO Generator for has lots of advantages for websites created on Joomla. It has support on lots of languages, making it very accessible for lots of international businesses. The process of curating keywords has three steps:

It analyzes all the content from an article and generates a list of keywords ordered by their time of appearance.
Then, it removes all the keywords from the list that might have a negative influence and puts them on the blacklist.
In the end, it selects the keywords and adds them into the keyword section.

Another cool advantage of the plugin is the fact that it works in a reversible mood, too. For example, you can generate keywords for older articles.

 
16. EF SEO

Another great SEO plugin for Joomla is Easy Frontend SEO. Lots of people recommend it due to its ease of use. The plugin helps you add and edit any meta information you’d like on every page. Be it a title, description, keywords, generator or robots, you can change them in frontend. So you don’t require advanced HTML knowledge. The plugin is available on every page on any Joomla website so it’s very easy to change any piece of information you want.

The plugin does not change, alter or even delete given Joomla! data. One big advantage of the plugin is the direct influence on the generated metadata, which gives a lot of freedom to the user.

 
17. JoomSEF

JoomSEF can be used to make the URLs search engine friendly. Plus, you get a lot of interesting and helpful features, such as customized error pages, internal linking management, duplicate URL customization, and search engine friendly URL management as you can see in the JoomSEF panel.

The Joomla SEO extension offers support for URL translations at multilingual sites and tries to provide more comfort to the user. We all know how important search engine friendly URLs are and how needed they are for achieving better ranking with search engines.

Here are some of the main features of JoomSEF:

Generate friendly URLs.
Fully URL management.
404 pages customization.
URL caching.
301 Redirection management.
Multilingual support and more.

 
18. Tag Meta

Tag Meta is another great SEO plugin for Joomla that allows you to efficiently manage your website’s meta information. It offers great advantages for improving website rankings through SEO.

Tag Meta makes is very easy to set the title tag, meta tags or link “canonical” on any page by simply mentioning the URL or just a part of it. You can apply multiple rules together and they will work just as fine. For example, if you set more than one rule to a URL they will apply in cascade using the ordering set. Only if the rule is declared as “the last one” the process will stop.

Another great advantage is the fact that you can generate meta information dynamically for each page. For example, you can keep the title tag on each rule from the global settings.

 
19. sh404SEF

sh404SEF is the longest developed and most popular SEO extension in Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED). It supports all the Joomla versions and it comes with lots of SEO features.

Here’s what you can do with sh404SEF:

Create search engine friendly URLs.
Use automating tinyURL generation.
Remove duplicate URLs.
Have support for canonical URLs.
Integrate Google Analytics and get support for Google Tags.
Integrated support for Twitter Cards and Open Graph so you can easily add social media buttons to your entire website.
Create customized error pages.
Customize the page title and page description with the bulk option.
Remove duplicates.
Protect the site against malicious page requests and control site access from suspicious domains.
Have multilingual support and so much more.

 
Wix
 
20. Wix SEO wiz

Wix is a closed system and has an SEO plugin that can be used only by Wix websites, named Wix SEO Wiz. It is a simple plugin to use for optimizing your website to rank on SERP. While there are other platforms you could use for creating websites, Wix is a great fit for small businesses, blogs, and personal websites.

The SEO plugin has three main features:

get keywords ideas and see how competitive they are.
index site on Google more quickly.
get access to how-to videos about SEO.

To optimize a page you need to select the Page SEO, then add title, description and preview your page in SERP. Then you need to click on save and publish when the page is finished.

The plugin was created two years ago in order to help Wix websites get reached online by users. It starts by creating a personalized SEO plan, adding a website, keywords, type of business and following instructions to rank higher in search engines.

 
Shopify
 
21. Plug in SEO

Plug in SEO will help you check your shop for SEO problems. This diagnosis tool checks all the essential areas of search engine optimization, such as titles, headings, meta descriptions, blog post structure, speed and much more.

You have to install the plugin and afterwards your store will be checked. Once the analysis is done, the app will display the details to let you know what improvements are necessary.

Plug in SEO constantly checks your shop for any issues and sends you notifications on email when it finds something. The app has full support and code snippets directions and guidance. Plus you get efficient title and description editing by following a template.

Plug in SEO is very good to improve your SEO for your store and get exceptional control of your customized SEO actions for Shopify.

 
22. ReloadSEO

ReloadSEO is an SEO extension that works great for e-commerce, so it can also be used for Magento, Joomla!, WordPress, Drupal and more. It promises to give you all the SEO tools you need to grow your search traffic and revenue.

ReloadSEO is made simple so that each user can improve the results for their website no matter how much SEO they know. It covers backlinks, content, keyword research, store monitoring and more.

Built as a native solution for major platforms, ReloadSEO carries a lot of benefits for e-commerce websites and focuses on lots of needs:

Perform analytics reports & search insights: measure SEO metrics and track changes to find pages from your website that need to be optimized for the search engines.
Position tracking: monitor your positions over time to improve low-ranking pages.
Discover new keywords: find new relevant keywords opportunities for your business.
Optimize content: Get insights and tips to write better content for people, not for search engines.
Manage your site’s health by spotting any issues on site.
Find link opportunities: get ideas by accessing the ReloadSEO database through link prospecting.

 
Weebly
 
23. Weebly SEO Plugin

Weebly SEO Plugin is a great fit for websites designed on Weebly. Similar to WordPress, Weebly is a web hosting service but mostly oriented for online shopping. The Weebly websites are SEO friendly and can rank on SERP if you follow the SEO principles. There’s nothing different than other websites in terms of SEO.

Every website created with Weebly has SEO Settings you can edit to rank higher on Google and other search engines. There are on-page and off-site SEO settings available so you can edit the plugin.

Compared to other plugins, Weebly has some other advantages:

easy and intuitive design: use drag and drop to edit content, modify your website’s design and interface.
customization: beside the previous options to edit your website’s design, you can modify your site’s HTML and CSS codes.
integrated SEO features: edit the SEO Settings for each individual page.
e-commerce integration: the plugin has lots of features for online shops such as product pages, payment process, delivery information, and so on.
integration with other apps: for e-commerce, social media, marketing, website features, and communication.

The CMS Weebly was named Top Rated Content Management Systems for 2019 by TrustRadius.

 
Squarespace
 
24. Squarespace SEO

Squarespace offers a simple solution for those who are interested in less customization with low maintenance and want something simple to use. Squarespace SEO is a simple solution for those who want to publish content quickly and efficiently.

Some users blame Squarespace because it doesn’t have better SEO integration into the platform. I would say that it is a better fit for beginners, rather than SEO pros. When people want to use Squarespace for creating their website, SEO is by far the topic that is most frequently asked about.

When you sign up for the Squarespace platform, your site is generally optimized for SEO; even the founder of Squarespace mentions that.

Squarespace is engineered to work properly without a sea of plugins, and you should not take the lack of plugin for this to mean that we didn’t actually just build it right from the start.

 
Anthony Casalena

Anthony Casalena, founder of Squarespace

Plus you have other benefits included, such as automatic XML sitemap, free SSL certificate, user-friendly themes, clean HTML and URLs.

Source: www.stylefactoryproductions.com

 
Extra – Chrome
 
25. MozBar

MozBar is a free Chrome extension that delivers metrics on the go. If you install the MozBar from Google Play, you’ll see the ‘M’ icon from the toolbar at the top right-hand side of your browser. Whenever you’ll search for something on the web, you’ll get some information on every webpage that appears in the search results. 

With just a simple click, you can see the page authority (PA), domain authority (DA), the number of links and referring domains. Plus you can see the spam score and get lots of insights on the go.

Whenever you enter a new website, you can see on-site elements, link metrics, markup data or highlight internal and external links, followed and nofollowed links and so on. 

 
26. SEOquake

SEOquake is a Chrome plugin developed by SEMrush. It has lots of information displayed directly in your search results page. That way, you can see the number of links, referring domains, rankings data, display ads information. Plus you get more insights through the integration with Alexa, Whois, Bing and Wayback Machine. 

You can edit settings and see results based on the location you set it from the Chrome extension, or order the results by a specific parameter from the left-side menu. 

Moreover, for each individual page, you get a set of new data regarding links, content, specific metrics, internal and external links, ads, traffic and many more. 

 
27. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords Everywhere is is one of the best SEO plugins for Chrome. For every search you make, you get free search volume, CPC & competition data and additional lists for related keywords, and other suggestions. The SEO extension is easy to use and saves a lot of time since all the information is at sight.

The Chrome extension supports lots of other websites where you can see the metrics under the search toolbox, websites such as Youtube, GSC, Google Trends, Google Analytics, Soolve, Esty, Bing, eBay and more. 

 
28. WooRank

WooRank is a Chrome extension that works based on score. It is designed by the same company that has an SEO tool – WooRank. Once enabled, Woorank calculates a score based on the website analysis it makes it by checking content, links, technical information, mobile, local and usability. It provides various SEO tips for your website to rank number 1 in SERP.

For a more comprehensive analysis, you can click on any information the extension gives you and check the pop out with the whole analysis. 

 
29. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb gives you website traffic and key metrics for any website, such as traffic, search data, social, display ads, on-site content, audience and competitors. By collecting all this information you can gain insights into any website’s statistics and strategy as you’re browsing. 

Similar to the other Chrome extensions, with a simple click you can get a more comprehensive analysis on the site you want. Find all the information you need in one place.

 
30. SEO Peek

SEO Peek is a great Chrome extension for content marketers. It quickly checks the on-page SEO factors of any website. It simply checks the DOM of a page, so there’s no need to bother with the HTML source. Enable it from the top-right side of the page and see the page title, meta description, meta keywords, headings, HTTP Status, meta tags, canonicalization annotations, mobile annotation and more.

The post The Best SEO Plugins for All Major Platforms [The Complete List] appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Read more: cognitiveseo.com

We’re back with a brand-new visitor for our cognitiveSEO Talks series, Gerry White, an SEO specialist with broad understanding in analytics, digital and search marketing technique, social marketing and a lot more. With nearly 20 year experience in digital, Gerry is a technical marketing specialist that has actually dealt with business such as BBC, McDonald’s, Gordon Ramsey, Premier Inn or DirectGov. Gerry has actually been producing, promoting and examining sites and more just recently apps for business throughout the world and he is likewise a speaker on worldwide conferences. At the minute he is operating at Just Eat.

Working with so prominent brand names and numerous business, Gerry acknowledged a large experience. As Gerry pointed out in the cognitiveSEO talks, he’s constantly screening and does case research studies on the go. For him and his group, it is extremely crucial to use the user an excellent experience and constantly take a look at all the various methods individuals are browsing a website. He provides a guideline of a thumb:

.Whatever needs to be very basic with website architecture. The larger the websites, the more complex things are. You require to make sure the SEO fundamentals are.Gerry White.SEO Consultant at JUST EAT and Co-organiser of ConferenceTakeItOffline.co.uk @Dergal / TakeItOffline.co.uk

In his extra time, Gerry assists arrange the TakeItOffline digital round tables with companies, companies and experts. You ought to listen to this interview with Gerry White as you’ll get great deals of insights and suggestions for producing much better sites and make them liked by the user and Google. We would not wish to ruin the talk for you so proceed and find it yourself.

.Improving the title tag will have a substantial effect on SERP.Gerry White.SEO Consultant at JUST EAT and Co-organiser of ConferenceTakeItOffline.co.uk @Dergal / TakeItOffline.co.uk

Tackled Topics:.

.The most significant difficulties in scaling your SEO efforts;.How Gerry White utilizes screening for his customers;.Techniques for increasing your rankings;.Google Tag Manager Cons and pros;.What ranking aspects still matter in 2019;.The value of significance in Google rankings;.The effect of anchor texts as a spam signal for Google;.The value of sitemaps;.Many important SEO methods utilized by Gerry White.

Top 10 Marketing Nuggets:

.The bigger the site, the more things like crawl spending plan are definitely vital. 4:12 It’’ s extremely crucial to ensure to fix any problems when utilizing JavaScript for enhancing UX; specifically when launching brand-new functions and innovations. 7:53 Every number of quarters we take a look at all the various method individuals are browsing our websites. 8:43 Keyword research study is among those things that every SEO individual dislikes to do. It is a crucial part of the task. We are utilizing Data Studio to aids with this and it is among the most important pointers for entrepreneur. 9:09 For keyword research study, we are utilizing significance and the good-old-fashioned keyword volume as our primary metrics. 9:39 Google attempts to analyze every inquiry and enhance the outcomes based upon your search. 12:55 Brand search can affect a site’’ s rankings. I believe traffic alone doesn’’ t have a direct impact in rankings. 14:33 Google is still utilizing link architecture as an essential ranking signal. 16:27 In order to rank well for a specific page, you wear’’ t requirement to have a minimum variety of keywords for a piece of material, however you do require to have sufficient keywords to reveal intent and importance. 18:18 Putting images in the sitemap is a fast win. 22:59

The post Is Relevance one of the most Important Google Ranking Factor? Interview with Gerry White appeared initially on SEO Blog|cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics &&Strategies .

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Read more: cognitiveseo.com

We all know that links help rankings. And the more links you build the higher you’ll rank.

But does it really work that way?

Well, the short answer is links do help with rankings and I have the data to prove it.

But, you already know that.

The real question is what kind of links do you need to boost your rankings?

Is it rich anchor text links? Is it sitewide links? Or what happens when the same site links to you multiple times? Or when a site links to you and then decides to remove the link?

Well, I decided to test all of this out and then some.

Over the last 10 months, I decided to run an experiment with your help. The experiment took a bit longer than we wanted, but we all know link building isn’t easy, so the experiment took 6 months longer than was planned.

Roughly 10 months ago, I emailed a portion of my list and asked if they wanted to participate in a link building experiment.

The response was overwhelming… 3,919 people responded, but of course, it would be a bit too hard to build links to 3,919 sites.

And when I say build, I’m talking about manual outreach, leveraging relationships… in essence, doing hard work that wouldn’t break Google’s guidelines.

Now out of the 3,919 people who responded, we created a set of requirements to help us narrow down the number of sites to something more manageable:

Low domain score – we wanted to run an experiment on sites with low domain scores. If a site had a domain score of greater than 20, we removed it. When a site has too much authority, they naturally rank for terms and it is harder to see the impact that a few links can have. (If you want to know your domain score you can put in your website URL here.)
Low backlink count – similar to the one above, we wanted to see what happens with sites with little to no backlinks. So, if a site had more than 20 backlinks, it was also removed from the experiment.
No subdomains – we wanted sites that weren’t a Tumblr.com or a WordPress.com site or subdomain. To be in this experiment, you had to have your own domain.
English only sites – Google in English is more competitive than Google in Spanish, or Portuguese or many other languages. For that reason, we only selected sites that had their main market as the United States and the site had to be in English. This way, if something worked in the United States, we knew it would work in other countries as they tend to be less competitive.

We decided to cap the experiment to 200 sites. But eventually, many of the sites dropped off due to their busy schedule or they didn’t want to put in the work required. And as people dropped off, we replaced them with other sites who wanted to participate.

How the experiment worked

Similar to the on-page SEO experiment that we ran, we had people write content between 1,800 and 2,000 words.

Other than that we didn’t set any requirements. We just wanted there to be a minimum length as that way people naturally include keywords within their content. We did, however, include a maximum length as we didn’t want people to write 10,000-word blog posts as that would skew the data.

Websites had 2 weeks to publish their content. And after 30 days of it being live, we looked up the URLs within Ubersuggest to see how many keywords the article ranked for in the top 100, top 50 and top 10 spots.

Keep in mind that Ubersuggest has 1,459,103,429 keywords in its database from all around the world and in different languages. Most of the keywords have low search volume, such as 10 a month.

We then spent 3 months building links and then waited 2 months after the links were built to see what happened to the rankings.

The URLs were then entered back into the Ubersuggest database to see how many keywords they ranked for.

In addition to that, we performed this experiment in batches, we just didn’t have the manpower and time to do this for 200 sites all at once, hence it took roughly 10 months for this to complete.

We broke the sites down into 10 different groups. That’s 20 sites per group. Each group only leveraged 1 link tactic as we wanted to see how it impacted rankings.

Here’s each group:

Control – with this group we did nothing but write content. We needed a baseline to compare everything to.
Anchor text – the links built to the articles in this group contained rich anchor text but were from irrelevant pages. In other words, the link text contained a keyword, but the linking site wasn’t too relevant to the article. We built 3 anchor text links to each article.
Sitewide links – they say search engines don’t care for sitewide links, especially ones in a footer… I wanted to test this out for myself. We built one sitewide link to each article.
Content-based links – most links tend to happen within the content and that’s what we built here. We built 3 content-based links to each article.
Multiple links from the same site – these weren’t sitewide links but imagine one site linking to you multiple times within their content. Does it really help compared to having just 1 link from a site? We built 3 links from the same site to each article.
One link – in this scenario we built one link from a relevant site.
Sidebar links – we built 3 links from the sidebar of 3 different sites.
Nofollow links – does Google really ignore nofollow links? You are about to find out because we built 3 nofollow links to each article.
High authority link – we built 1 link with a domain score of 70 or higher.
Built and removed links – we built 3 links to articles in this group and then removed them 30 days after the links were picked up by Google.

Now before I share what we learned, keep in mind that we didn’t build the links to the domain’s homepage. We built the links to the article that was published. That way we could track to see if the links helped.

Control group

Do you really need links to rank your content? Especially if your site has a low domain score?

Based on the chart, the older your content gets, the higher you will rank. And based on the data even if you don’t do much, over a period of 6 months you can roughly rank for 5 times more keywords even without link building.

As they say, SEO is a long game and the data shows it… especially if you don’t build any links.

Anchor text

They say anchor text links really help boost rankings. That makes sense because the link text has a keyword.

But what if the anchor rich link comes from an irrelevant site. Does that help boost rankings?

It looks like anchor text plays a huge part in Google’s rankings, even if the linking site isn’t too relevant to your article.

Now, I am not saying you should build spammy links and shove keywords in the link text, more so it’s worth keeping in mind anchor text matters.

So if you already haven’t, go put in your domain here to see who links to you. And look for all of the non-rich anchor text links and email each of those site owners.

Ask them if they will adjust the link and switch it to something that contains a keyword.

This strategy is much more effective when you ask people to switch backlinks that contain your brand name as the anchor text to something that is more keyword rich.

Sitewide Links

They say sitewide links are spammy… especially if they are shoved in the footer of a site.

We built one sitewide footer link to each article to test this out.

Although sites that leverage sitewide links showed more of an increase than the control group, the results weren’t amazing, especially for page 1 rankings.

Content-based links

Do relevance and the placement of the links impact rankings? We built 3 in-content links that were relevant to each article.

Now the links were not rich in anchor text.

Compared to the baseline, rankings moved up to a similar rate as the sites who built rich anchor text links from irrelevant sites.

Multiple site links

I always hear SEOs telling me that if you build multiple links from the same site, it doesn’t do anything. They say that Google only counts one link.

For that reason, I thought we would put this to the test.

We built 3 links to each article, but we did something a bit different compared to the other groups. Each link came from the same site, although we did leverage 3 different web pages.

For example, if 3 different editors from Forbes link to your article from different web pages on Forbes, in theory, you have picked up 3 links from the same site.

Even if the same site links to you multiple times, it can help boost your rankings.

One link 

Is more really better? How does one relevant link compare to 3 irrelevant links?

It’s not as effective as building multiple links. Sure, it is better than building no links but the articles that built 3 relevant backlinks instead of 1 had roughly 75% more keyword placements in the top 100 positions of Google.

So if you have a choice when it comes to link building, more is better.

Sidebar links

Similar to how we tested footer links, I was curious to see how much placement of a link impacts rankings.

We looked at in-content links, footer links, and now sidebar links.

Shockingly, they have a significant impact in rankings. Now in order of effectiveness, in-content links help the most, then sidebar links, and then sitewide footer when it comes to placement.

I wish I tested creating 3 sitewide footer links to each article instead of 1 as that would have given me a more accurate conclusion for what placements Google prefers.

Maybe I will be able to run that next time. 🙁

Nofollow links

Do nofollow links help with rankings?

Is Google pulling our leg when they say they ignore them?

From what it looks like, they tend to not count nofollow links. Based on the chart above, you can see that rankings did improve over time, but so did almost every other chart, including the control group.

But here’s what’s funny: the control group had a bigger percentage gain in keyword rankings even though no links were built.

Now, I am not saying that nofollow links hurt your rankings, instead, I am saying they have no impact.

High authority link

Which one do you think is better:

Having one link from a high domain site (70 or higher)?

OR

Having 3 links from sites with an average or low domain score?

Even though the link from the authority site wasn’t rich in anchor text and we only built 1 per site in this group… it still had a bigger impact than the sites in the other group.

That means high authority links have more weight than irrelevant links that contain rich anchor text or even 3 links from sites with a low domain score.

If you are going to spend time link building, this is where your biggest ROI will be.

Build and removed links

This was the most interesting group, at least that is what the data showed.

I always felt that if you built links and got decent rankings you wouldn’t have to worry too much when you lost links.

After all, Google looks at user signals, right?

This one was shocking. At least for sites that have a low domain score, if you gain a few links and then lose them fairly quickly, your rankings can tank to lower than what they originally were.

I didn’t expect this one and if I had to guess, maybe Google has something programmed in their algorithm that if a site loses a large portion of their links fast that people don’t find value in the site and that it shouldn’t rank.

Or that the site purchased links and then stopped purchasing the links…

Whatever it may be, you should consider tracking how many links you lose on a regular basis and focus on making sure the net number is increasing each month.

Conclusion

I wish I had put more people behind this experiment as that would have enabled me to increase the number of sites that I included in this experiment.

My overall sample size for each group is a bit too small, which could skew the data. But I do believe it is directionally accurate, in which building links from high domain score sites have the biggest impact.

Then shoot for rich anchor text links that are from relevant sites and are placed within the content.

I wouldn’t have all of your link text rich in anchor text and if you are using white hat link building practices it naturally won’t be and you won’t have to worry much about this.

But if you combine all of that together you should see a bigger impact in your rankings, especially if you are a new site.

So, what do you think about the data? Has it helped you figure out what types of links Google prefers?

The post What Type of Links Does Google Really Prefer? appeared first on Neil Patel.

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It’s interesting for me to see that even experienced SEO specialists forget about the power of internal linking. As backlinks from other websites become harder and harder to obtain (because people focus on the wrong techniques), using an internal linking strategy with the right combination of anchor texts can bring great SEO results.

But what makes a good internal linking strategy? Well, the answer varies from site to site but, generally, it’s the foundation that matters. Build it right from the start and understand the basic concepts and you’ll be set for having a good internal linking structure forever.

In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know, so keep reading!

What Is Internal Linking & Why Is It Important for SEO?
How Does Google Treat Internal Links?

Page Rank
Anchor Texts
Link Location / Position
Click Depth
URL Path
Broken Links & Orphan Pages

Types of Internal Links

Contextual links
Image Links
Navigational & Footer Links
JavaScript Links

Internal Linking Strategy

Blogs & Informational Sites
eCommerce & Other

Silos & Topic Clusters

 
What Is Internal Linking & Why Is It Important for SEO?

Internal links are just like backlinks, but within your own website. They are links that go from one page on a web domain to another page on the same domain. They are most commonly observed in navigation menus, sidebars and footers, but also within the article body.

Search Engines look at a lot of things when they are trying to determine which pages they should rank. One of the things it looks at are internal links.

Through internal linking your website vouches for your own pages. I know, it’s kind of narcissistic, but it’s really helpful for search engines and SEO!

If we go after the same rules as in off-page SEO, namely that a page with more backlinks is more valuable in the eyes of other sites, in on-page SEO a page with more internal links is more valuable in the eyes of your own website.

So if you said “My eyes are beautiful 252 times per day” and “My nose is beautiful 9 times per day” people would naturally figure out that you REALLY like your eyes and that they’re very important to you.

But enough about how pretty I am, let’s get back to serious stuff!

 
How Does Google Treat Internal Links?

Generally, it’s enough to just do internal linking in order to benefit from it. That’s because many people ignore it completely! However, it’s important to understand exactly how Google treats internal links if you really want to take advantage of them.

 
Page Rank

PageRank, although it sounds ancient, is still used. So when you link to a page from another page, be it internally or externally, you pass PageRank. It’s Google’s score for… ranking pages (actually, I think Larry Page really wanted his name in one of the algorithms).

Larry Page (Google co-founder). Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

When you add more than one link, the PageRank splits evenly. This means that if, hypothetically, the PR score was 100 and you added 3 external links, each would get a score of 33.3.

The way Page Rank works has changed over time. Normally, a while ago, people would ‘sculpt’ Page Rank by using rel=”nofollow” tags. This meant that you could link to 50 pages but only follow one link to pass the entire equity to it. However, when you use a nofollow tag today, that PageRank will vanish, so you won’t win anything.

The PR algorithm is complicate, but it’s important to understand that it doesn’t only apply to backlinks, but also to internal links.

 
Anchor Texts

In one of my last articles I mentioned how you can create really strong pages by linking them in boilerplate content.

However, as Nikola Roza mentioned in a comment, you should take note that only the first link’s anchor text is taken into account by Google.

This is very important when thinking your internal linking structure, especially if you’re trying to rank for multiple keywords.

For example, it doesn’t really matter that I link to the domain analysis tool under a different anchor text now, because the navigation already links to it under the anchor text “Site Explorer” in the navigation section.

Don’t take this assumption for granted though! Many tests have been made and Google officials ‘kinda confirmed this, but as of today we aren’t really sure if that’s still the case.

In SEO, things might change over time. The truth is that it’s hard to believe Google only takes the first anchor text into account, especially because Google keeps endorsing the contextual links found in the body. However, it’s safer to assume at this point that the first link is the one that matters, so make sure you use the most valuable anchor text if you plan on adding important pages to your Navigation.

Quick Tip 1: If you want to avoid that, you can just link to a general services page (without any drop-downs to separate services) where you can then list each service and link to its specific page.

Quick Tip 2: If you do link to your important pages in the navigation section, consider diversifying your off-site links (backlinks) anchor texts in order to target multiple phrases. So if you secure a guest post, don’t link back to your article always using the same anchor text as in the navigation (although you should use it from time to time as well).

If you want to check your internal links’ anchor text distribution, the CognitiveSEO Site Audit makes it really easy. Just go to the Site Architecture section > Linking Structure and then go to Anchor Text Distribution. Make sure to view the Internal Links.

 
Link Location / Position

Google treats links differently depending on where they are located on the website. From what we know, Google values contextual links in the body of the page more.

It’s also important that the link is positioned higher in the content (but not necessarily in the Header section).

 
Click Depth

What also matters when you interlink between your pages is the click depth. If a page is only found 27 level deep in your website, there are big chances that Google will consider it less important.

The Site Audit makes it really easy for you to see the click depth of your pages in order to spot non-prioritized important pages.

In our case, those are mostly blog pages number 8, which are found 9 clicks away from the homepage. This is normal and those pages aren’t actually important. However, if we found an article there, it means that we probably should interlink it more so that Google can pick it up faster from more recent posts.

 
URL Path

A thing that can also help you build a good interlinking strategy is your site URL path structure. We know that shorter URLs tend to rank better in Google.

However, when stuffing all the URLs immediately after the root domain, it’s harder to see the bigger picture when you’re trying to segment sections of your website.

Having a root only URL structure might work well for a blog, but having a hierarchy in your URL path might be more helpful for an eCommerce site.

 
Broken Links & Orphan Pages

A very important thing regarding your internal linking structure is taking care of your broken links & orphan pages.

Broken Links are actually 404 pages. They can be easily fixed by replacing them or by using 301 redirects. The CognitiveSEO Site Audit makes it easy to identify your broken links and resources:

Google doesn’t like broken links & pages because it sends users to an unsatisfying location.

Oprhan Pages are pages that aren’t linked to from anywhere in the site. The CognitiveSEO Tools can also help you find some orphan pages:

However, the truth is that it’s impossible to identify all orphan pages on a site because… there are no links to them. Usually, there might sometimes be backlinks to them pointing to other sites (but no internal links) or they might be in the sitemap but not in the site structure. 

 
Types of Internal Links

There are multiple types of internal links that you can use when improving your interlinking structure.

 
Contextual Links

Contextual links are the most important ones. They are hyperlinks found in a <a> tag which wraps around a relevant anchor text.

So in HTML it would look like this: <a href=”https://cognitiveseo.com”>SEO Tools</a> and in the article itself it would look like this: SEO Tools.

When using contextual links to interlink between your articles, make sure you include keywords in your anchors, to tell Google what the link is about. However, don’t use that as your main focus. The purpose of a link is to be clicked on! Try to get the user to click your link.

 
Image Links

Image links are pretty simple to understand. You click an image it’s’ going to take you to a link. Here’s an example. Click it and it will take you somewhere nice.

The general consensus is that contextual links have greater value than image links. I agree. I rarely click on images to go to another article or read about something. I actually expect the image to enlarge if I’m clicking it so that I may view it better.

However, despite being less valuable, image links hide an important technique which you can take advantage of!

You see, the problem with contextual links is that you can’t really use the anchor texts exactly as you want. Sometimes, the queries people use don’t have verbs or don’t really make sense. Or the keyword you want to target might simply not fit in your sentence.

Well, in case you can’t fit your desired anchor text anywhere in your content, you can definitely use the keyword in the image alt tag, which will be viewed as an anchor text. This is also a good way of adding hard to write keywords into your content, even without links.

I’m not necessarily recommending image links and definitely not recommending exploiting alt tags. Try to keep things useful and relevant.

However, keep in mind that blind people might get a bad experience because content readers often use image alt tags to describe an image. You can save your soul by at least describing the image in the image title tag, which content readers might also pick up.

 
Navigational & Footer Links

Navigational links mainly refer to the structure of the site, since they are kept within lists (<ul> & <li> tags). Make sure you structure you site.

Regarding footer links, the main rule would be not to spam too much. People have a bad habit of doing that.

Also, footer links don’t always have to be the same on every page! Kayak.com uses footer links to its advantage in the car rental section. You can see some cities in the following screenshot. However, those will change depending on the page the user is viewing, to show only the closest or most relevant cities.

The same criterion goes for the sidebars. Use them to your advantage, but don’t abuse spamming all your categories in there. Only the most important ones or the most relevant to the current page the user is viewing.

 
JavaScript Links

Google is improving everyday. It can render JavaScript, however it’s a better idea to display the HTML in order to make sure your content is well understood.

However, when it comes to links, Google has made it clear that it won’t follow JavaScript links. So if you want, you can try to use them instead of adding the rel=”nofollow” tag. It’s safer to keep your links in a classic A tag.

If you like to live your life on the edge… you might think it’s a way of bypassing the “first link priority”. Well… I haven’t tested this so I can’t say for sure, but what I know is that links placed after a nofollow link to the same page will be ignored as well. Also, it’s sneaky and can get you into trouble. 

 
Internal Linking Strategy

Developing a long term interlinking strategy is important because as your site grows, you have to make sure Google is able to find the pages easily.

The best internal linking strategy is to do internal linking.

Note that the following statement applies generally, not only for blogs and informational sites. It’s a foundation for any other strategy.

However, there are more specific cases in which different strategies work better. These are actually entire topics for other articles, but I’ll touch them briefly.

 
Blogs & Informational Sites

After following the boilerplate content tips mentioned above, the rest is pretty simple:

When you write new articles, always link to old ones. After you finish writing new ones, edit old ones and link to the new one.

Interlink between articles only when relevant and remember to use the proper anchor text.

The secret here is to create a habit of doing this. Without a habit, you’re always going to be frustrated. The truth is I don’t always edit old articles to interlink to the new ones I post, but I remember to do it when I update old articles, as it’s a habit.

 
eCommerce & Other

When your site is big and it has thousands of pages, things aren’t that easy. You can’t add all the pages in the Navigation.

A good strategy I always recommend for eCommerce website (which few actually do) is having a blog. This will not only enable the site to target more keywords as more content gets published, but it also opens the opportunity to link to subcategories product pages that don’t fit in the navigation as well.

Take advantage of Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs are a great way of strengthening more important pages such as category pages. Why? Because each subcategory will link to its parent, but not to its child.

Considering the following pattern, you can see how the Category page is linked to 4 times, while the product page only one time. Naturally, I’ll assume that in most cases, the Category page is the most important page, targeting a broader and more competitive keyword, which is the main anchor text used in the internal linking strategy.

Home > Category > Subcategory > Sub Subcategory > Product
Home > Category > Subcategory > Sub Subcategory
Home > Category > Subcategory
Home > Category

Moreover, it’s very important to correctly implement canonical tags on your pages, because parameters & search filters also often create links which can leak if the canonical tag isn’t properly set.

Furthermore, consider using dynamic footer links depending on your categories instead of just using the same footer links on every page. Is the user on the Guitars page? Link to Effect Pedals in the footer. Is the user in the Drum Kits section? Link to Drum Sticks.

Having an internal linking strategy is crucial when you have a huge website, with hundreds of thousands of posts, products, categories and pages.

However, when your site is smaller, you shouldn’t stress too much over it.

If you have a small services website, internal linking shouldn’t really be an issue. Google will be able to crawl 25-50 pages pretty easily.

What you should focus on is developing a content strategy that will expand your website. Keep using the general rule of “just interlink”.

 
Silos & Topic Clusters

There’s one point I still want to touch in this article. There are two main ways of building sites. You can either structure them hierarchically (silo) or use topic clusters, which are very useful for informational sites and blogs.

A silo structure site looks something like this:

Home

Category

Subcategory
Subcategory
Subcategory

Category

Subcategory
Subcategory
Subcategory

etc.

This works really well for services websites & eCommerce sites. Then you have topic clusters which look something like this:

With topic clusters, you need to write what is known as a pillar piece of content, such as “SEO Guide” which is then surrounded by other less important topics such as “keyword research” or “link building”.

In the picture above, the arrows should be bidirectional. So the “SEO Guide” will mention a little bit about every topic, but link to a more detailed content about that topic which also links back to the main SEO Guide, strengthening it. The cluster can repeat, so “Keyword Research” might be surrounded by its own set of topics and so on.

You can always combine both silo structure (for your services section) with topic clusters (for your blog section). 

And that wraps it up. The basics of internal linking, how it helps your site rank better and how to properly do it. How do you prefer to structure your site? Do you use internal linking to your SEO advantage? How? Let us know in the comments section, we’re curious to find out!

The post Best Internal Linking Structure & Strategy to Boost Your SEO appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

Read more: cognitiveseo.com