How to Fix Shopify SEO Problems: Internal Links

What are Internal Links and Why are They Important?

Internal Links: Googlebot's Navigation Tool and Your Ally

You can think about internal links like they're the highways and backroads that connect different pages within your website. Search engines like Google rely on these links to discover and understand the structure of your site. For example, when Googlebot, the search engine's automated crawler, visits a webpage, it follows the internal links it finds to discover new pages. This process helps Googlebot create a comprehensive picture of your website's content and how the different pages relate to each other. By strategically using internal links, you can guide Googlebot to the most important pages on your site and ensure they get indexed effectively.

Internal Linking Best Practices

• Link to relevant content: Connect pages that discuss related topics or provide additional information on a subject. For example if you're selling organic cotton sheets, you'd want to link a blog post about the benefits of organic cotton sheets to your product page, and vice versa.
• Use descriptive anchor text: The text you click on (the link) should clearly describe the content of the linked page.
• Link to high-value pages: Point users and search engine bots towards important pages you want them to see.
• Avoid orphan pages: Ensure all valuable pages are linked from somewhere on your site.
• Link depth matters: Search engines can and will eventually discover most linked pages, but they will prioritize crawling pages closer to the homepage. So don't bury important content too deep within your website structure. One way to think about depth is the number of slashes in your webpage's URL. For example:
  • myshop.com/blog/interesting-page.html (2 levels deep - will have a higher priority)
  • myshop.com/blog/interesting-topics/interesting-subtopic/interesting-page.html (4 levels deep - will have a lower priority)
• Balance internal linking: Don't overwhelm a page with too many outgoing links.
• Variety is key: Link to different types of content, like blog posts, product pages, or collections listings.
• Target relevant keywords: Include relevant keywords in your anchor text strategically.
• Use internal linking for navigation: Make it easy for users to find what they're looking for on your site.
• Track and analyze: Monitor which internal links perform best and adjust your strategy accordingly.

The good news is, the menu that appears in the header of every page of your website creates the basis of your internal linking structure! 

Link Maintenance 

When you are creating your internal linking structure, make sure you aren’t linking to any pages that will result in a 404 Page Not Found error. 

If you are removing a product page due to updating inventory, or updating an old blog post, make sure you look for any links that may “break” as a result, and fix those at the same time. 

A better practice is to not remove the product page at all. Instead, use the old page to explain that the product is no longer available and link to an alternative. This way, you hold onto the positive search history for the existing product and create an internal link at the same time. 

Use our Broken Link Checker to check for and redirect any broken links.