Linking Your Pages CorrectlyStructuring Your Internal Links

There are two main types of internal linking methods –

hierarchical and mesh.

Hierarchical linking

Hierarchical linking is used where one or more pages on your site (such as the home page) are considered more important than other pages. Important pages are linked to from all other pages in the site, but not all pages cross-link between each other. This concentrates PageRank on your most important pages.

Most sites should use a hierarchical linking structure, whereby the home page and the most important product, service, or content pages are linked to more often than other pages are. In this way, you can increase the chance that your most important page is ranked the highest on Google for your most important keyword phrase. The following figure illustrates this concept.

The home page typically has the highest PR value as this is the page most often linked to, both externally and internally. This may not be ideal if your home page is nothing but a splash page or contains little content.

In this case, you should redesign your home page to include more content and make it more relevant to Google (and to your visitors). If this is not possible, you should re-link internally to your most important keyword-relevant content page(s).

Hierarchical linking – only important page(s) get links from every other page l

Note that in the preceding figure that the About Us page is only linked to from a single page. This is because the About Us page is not nearly as important (as far as relevant content related to theme, topic and keywords) as the other pages. So why funnel precious PR value to it – instead flow PR value out of the page back to the home page.

Mesh linking
Mesh linking is used when all pages are considered equally important (to theme, topic, and keywords). This is the simplest linking method in that each page on the site links to every other page on the site. Most sites use mesh linking by default without thinking about it by virtue of having the same menu or navigation bar on each page that contains the same links. This evenly distributes PageRank among all pages in the site, which is generally not ideal. The following figure illustrates this concept.