In-Content Link Building: Best Practices when Linking to Content within Existing Articles

If you have a blog or website and you’re trying to get your site noticed within the search engines, you should consider thinking about linking your content to your other content. What better way to ensure that your links are relevant to your content than to connect to your content. But, in the past, Google has put some restrictions on how much they would count such linkage to your content.

Knowing what to do, not do, and how to do it are equally important when it comes to cross-promoting your content. You need to include the important things, without crossing over into “black hat” territory. Sometimes there is a thin line between the two. So how do you do it right without getting penalized by Google?

How to Link Content without Penalty

Google has specific requirements for linking your content to other content on your sites or blogs. For example, you should avoid duplicate content. Though it is perfectly fine to refer to research to back up your point with other information, you should never place the same content in more than one place. This is not to say you cannot include similar topics or other resources on the same topic. Just make sure you word it differently than you did in the other locations.

Creating original content is always important whether you are placing your content on your website, blog, or other web properties.

Stay Relevant

While linking to your content is usually a great idea, you should be careful not to include content that is not relevant to the content you are linking to. This might become an issue for site owners who are housing two different types of content or that focus on different niche areas.

For example, if you are a jewelry store owner, you could link to an article you wrote on how to care for jewelry. But you should not connect your jewelry article to a site about gardening that you also own. This can get you penalized by Google.

Relevance is and has always been a significant factor in how Google ranks a page so keep this in mind when you are working on your site and blog content.

Pay attention to anchor tags

Carefully-chosen anchor tags that lead the reader to take action are a good idea. The keywords should be chosen in such a way that they will catch the attention of your audience. For example, if you want to link to an article on jewelry-making, you should anchor the text, “jewelry-making,” rather than a random word that is less significant. When you do this, the search engines are more likely to associate that link with jewelry-making.

This is just one “white hat” technique that will improve the health of your SEO and solidify your link within the search engines.

Use Different Assets

Just like in the real world, the more assets you can create, the more impact you will have. Link your content from your main site to various other assets including YouTube channels, social media sites, blogs, and other URLs that you own. If you have planned carefully when you create your content, you should have no trouble linking out to relevant content that will supplement and complement your content.

Including your YouTube channel URL within your site content is also a good idea. If you can get visitors to watch your video content, it will increase their level of interest in your brand and increase your traffic to the YouTube platform as well. It is important to remember that YouTube is a search engine as well and many people come to YouTube to browse for video content. Using keywords that are relevant to other content within your digital assets should increase your standing in the search engines as well as in the minds of your visitors.

People or Search Engines: Which is Most Important?

When it comes to considering which is more important to people and search engines, it’s a bit of a coin toss. That’s because they are both important. They just serve different functions. The search engines such as Google have computer algorithms based on AI and technology that associates certain words, links, and phrases with your site. This is partly based on the keywords you have chosen for your site content as well as other aspects of your pages. Remember, too, that all of your pages are indexed by Google, not just the main page. So it is important that you get all of your pages in good SEO condition so that they will be ranked by Google.

Once people find your site, they need to see something they like. These are real human beings (not bots) who are reading your site content, looking at your links, graphics, and logo, and trying to decide on whether they want to deal with your site.

In other words, while it’s up to the search engines to get them there, you need to keep them there with your great content. This includes building an attractive page that is easy to navigate, a user-friendly customer experience, and providing engaging content that will make them want to stay on your site long enough to see what you offer.

This is the ultimate key to improving your SEO, cross-promoting your pages and URLs, and pulling it all together.

An Integrated Approach

It is a good goal to interweave your content across all of your assets. By cross-promoting your content from several of your assets and making sure there are several touch points or links from all of them to each other, you will greatly improve your power in the search engines and increase your SEO.

This takes some work, but you can do it if you have a system and keep it organized. It is critical to plan before you attempt to create this integrated web of your own. Haphazard links that are placed spasmodically throughout your content will do you no good and could even get your penalized. Also, you do not need to link everything or exchange every link with another. Merely sprinkle relevant links throughout your site and link out to your other assets to improve your SEO without overdoing the number of links.

Why Doing it Yourself is not Always Best

If you’re thinking that this is getting more complicated, you could be right. While most business owners know how to link to other assets and they understand the basics of SEO, they may not have the time or the understanding of the algorithms to know how to place them in the best locations to do the most good.

This is where it’s best to consider outsourcing your cross-promotional projects. There are many experts and freelance web developers who can help you with this if you need help. They probably also have much more time to devote to it since it is what they specialize in. You need to run your business and focus on the managerial decisions that you need to deal with every day.

By outsourcing the promotional aspects of your site someone else, you can free up time to work on more productive activities and projects that will increase your ROI.

The Importance of High Authority Sites

Another important aspect of creating cross-platform content is to link out to authority sites. These are known as backlinks for the authority site and this technique will improve their site more than your own. While it will give your site some limited SEO improvements due to referencing such a well-established site, it is always better when those sites reference or backlink to your site. How do you do this, though, if you do not have the traffic such sites like to see?

Why We Recommend The Hoth

At The Hoth, they know that you understand the importance of SEO, but perhaps you just don’t have the time to devote to this process. You may or may not have connections with this high-quality, authority sites that will allow you to create your internal web that leads people to your site.

The focus should be to create multiple doors that lead people to your landing page, your blog, or your YouTube channel. Decide which page is the most important to serve as your landing page and the end of your sales funnel as you plan your content and your pages.

If this seems confusing, never fear. Be sure to contact The Hoth, as they are well-connected to all of the most critical authority sites. They also know what they look for when it comes to content and can help you write, distribute, and market such material to the best places that will give you the highest level of improvement in your rankings.

Steps to Content Building

Here are the steps that The Hoth can take when you contact them to help you with your in-content link building.

1. The Hoth can create excellent content with in-content links that will get your site ranked in the searches.
2. The Hoth will then link out your content to high-authority sites that will get you the most attention in the shortest time, lowering your amount of expense and raising your ROI (return on investment).
3. The Hoth will also work on your SEO based on the inputs and keywords you submit to us. Once we know the focus you want for your site, we can get right to work to improve your SEO immediately so the results you get will improve your ranking over time.

The Hoth is a link-building service that allows you to focus on the best content, the best keywords, the best links, and in-content link building that money can buy. We back our techniques on tried-and-proven techniques that are backed by thousands of real SEO campaigns. We know what works and we can apply these same techniques to your content every day so that you get the best results.

In-content link building should not be seen as a one-stop solution for SEO. Instead, it is a piece of the puzzle that allows site owners to maximize their impact on the internet and reel in their target audience for the fewest ad dollars.

Our clients all agree that what The Hoth does for them is to provide a way for them to optimize, maximize, and deliver their content to the most places where they know their audience is. No matter what platform you are promoting your content on, you need our expert content team working for you to get the biggest benefit.