A strong internal mesh is like a well-designed road network: it allows visitors and search engines to easily navigate your site, discover all its riches and understand how your content is structured. In the energy sector, where information is dense and the issues are crucial, an optimized internal mesh is essential to establish your expertise and capture the attention of your audience.

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What is internal linking and why is it so important?

Internal meshing refers to all the links that connect the different pages of your website together. It plays a fundamental role at several levels:

• Improved user experience : Good internal linking guides your visitors through your site, allowing them to quickly find the information they are looking for and discover other relevant content. This reduces bounce rates and increases time spent on your site, key indicators for search engines.
• Natural search engine optimization (SEO): Search engines use internal links to understand the structure of your site, assess the importance of each page, and crawl all of your content. Well-structured internal links make it easier for your pages to be indexed and improve their ranking in search results.
• Distribution of “link juice”: “Link juice” is the value passed from one page to another via a link. Effective internal linking allows you to distribute this value strategically, strengthening the authority of your key pages and improving their visibility in search engines.

The fundamentals of effective internal meshing

Before diving into advanced techniques, it is crucial to master the basics of strong internal meshing:

• Clear hierarchical structure: Organize your site into logical categories and subcategories, with a central home page that links the main sections. This makes it easy for users and search engines to understand the structure of your site and navigate between different sections.
• Relevant contextual links: Integrate your links naturally into the body of your texts, using descriptive anchors that reflect the content of the target page. Avoid generic anchors like “click here” and favor anchors rich in relevant keywords.
• Navigation links: Use menus, sidebars, and footers to make it easier to navigate to important pages on your site, such as the home page, contact pages, services pages, or blog pages.
• Avoid broken links: Check your internal links regularly to make sure they are working properly and are not leading to 404 error pages. Broken links harm the user experience and can be penalized by search engines.

The semantic cocoon: a powerful strategy to strengthen your expertise

Le semantic cocoon is an advanced approach to internal meshing that involves grouping together pages that deal with the same topic or issue. This strategy has many advantages:

• Improving thematic relevance: By linking closely related pages, you reinforce the coherence of your content in the eyes of search engines and users. This shows that you are proficient in a specific topic and offer in-depth expertise.
• Better indexing: Search engines can more easily explore your semantic cocoon and understand the relationships between your pages. This makes it easier to index your content and improves its visibility in search results.
• Strengthening authority: The concentration of “link juice” within the cocoon helps increase the authority of the pages that compose it. This strengthens their positioning in search engines and attracts more qualified traffic.

Example: In the energy sector, the semantic cocoon can be used to create content clusters around key topics, such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy transition, etc. For example, you could create a semantic cocoon on solar energy, grouping articles on solar panels, photovoltaic installations, solar batteries, etc.

The essential tools to optimize your internal mesh

Several tools can help you analyze and improve your internal mesh:

• Google Search Console: This free tool helps you identify crawl errors, orphaned pages (without inbound links), and other issues with your internal linking. It also provides you with valuable data on how your site is performing in search results.
• Log analysis tools: These tools give you a detailed view of the behavior of crawlers on your site, allowing you to identify pages that are little or not crawled and adjust your internal meshing accordingly.
• Internal mesh visualization tools: These tools create graphical maps of your internal mesh, making it easier to identify areas for improvement, isolated pages, and opportunities to create new links.

Going further: advanced techniques

Once you have mastered the basics, you can explore more advanced techniques to optimize your internal mesh:

• Deep links: Prioritize links to deep pages on your site, rather than concentrating all links on the home page or a few main pages. This helps distribute “link juice” more fairly and improves the visibility of your lesser-known pages.
• Optimized anchors: Use keyword-rich anchors to strengthen the topical relevance of your links. This helps search engines understand the content of the target page and improve its ranking for matching queries.
• Internal links in existing content: Regularly revisit your old articles to add links to new, relevant content. This helps keep your internal linking up to date and strengthens the consistency of your site.
• Pillar pages: Create pillar pages (or “cornerstone content”) that group together essential information on a given topic and serve as an entry point to other, more detailed content. These pillar pages reinforce your authority on a specific topic and improve the navigation of your site.

Conclusion 

Internal linking is not an option, it is a necessity for any website that wants to improve its SEO and offer an optimal user experience. It improves the visibility of your pages in search engines, makes it easier for your visitors to navigate and strengthens the authority of your site. So, don't neglect this secret weapon!

Take the time to optimize your internal linking and you will quickly see positive results on your traffic, engagement and ranking in search results. And remember: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. So, be patient, persistent and, above all, have fun! 😉

 

 

Esteban Irschfeld, SEO Consultant at UX-Republic