Today’s question is about understanding internal linking and how it can help or hinder a search engine’s perception of a page’s topical relevance and authority.
“How do you technically assess whether a site’s internal linking is diluting topical authority rather than strengthening it?”
What Is Topical Authority
In essence, topical authority is the concept of how a search engine may view a website’s ability to provide an authoritative answer for a topic, inferred from how consistently it covers that topic and how signals reinforce that coverage.
Although there is no single standard defined metric for topical authority, it is, in essence, a measure of a page or a whole website’s relevance to a specific knowledge area, and trustworthiness as a source of information.
How Is It Affected By Internal Links
Internal links are crucial in shaping topical authority. They influence how authority, relevance, and intent signals are distributed across a website or folder. If we think of backlinks as bringing topical authority into a website, internal linking then helps to disperse it across the site. Internal linking determines where that authority accumulates and aids search engines in interpreting a page’s topical focus.
Links that connect topically relevant pages together help to strengthen the perception of the destination page’s authority on a subject. Lots of links from pages that aren’t seemingly relevant to each other can dilute the destination’s topical authority.
Something that is central to understanding the role of internal links in shaping topical authority is PageRank. PageRank is an algorithmic system developed in the late ’90s by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was used to measure the importance of a page based on the nature and volume of the links pointing to it. We need to keep this concept in mind when considering the use of internal links to shape the perception of a page’s topical authority.
How Important Are Internal Links In Regard To Topical Authority?
There are several factors of internal links that can affect how beneficial they are in strengthening a page’s topical authority.
Does The Link Pass Authority?
The first aspect is whether the link is followable, or if it is marked as “rel=nofollow.” This also applies to other variations of the “nofollow” tag, like “rel=sponsored.” Note, these tags are hints and not absolutes and Google might ignore them in some cases.
The URL that the link is on, and the page it is pointing to, also need to be crawlable. If those pages are disallowed via the robots.txt, then the value of the authority will not pass, as the page will not be crawled for the internal link to be picked up by the search bots.
Where Is It Placed On The Page?
Where a link is on the page could affect its authority. For example, links placed in the footer of every page on the site, get weighted differently than those that sit within the page’s main content. Google’s Martin Splitt has explained that Google does treat content in different parts of the page differently when trying to understand the topic of a page, and its content that is perceived to be main content that is used most to help with that.
Google’s John Muller recently answered a question about how links are valued in these different areas of a page. He said, “I don’t think there is anything quantifiably different about internal links in different parts of the page.” Although that may seem to contradict Splitt’s comments, remember that Muller is addressing how the value of a link may be affected by its location on a page, whereas Splitt is discussing how location of content affects how it is weighted to determine topic.
Following this logic, links appearing in the main content of a page may affect how that link passes topical relevancy.
What Is The Anchor Text?
The anchor text, or alt-text in cases where an image is linked, will help to inform the search engines of the nature of the page being linked to. The words that form the link are critical in helping the user and search engines know what to expect when they land on the page it takes them to. This context is another signal to the bots of the link destination’s relevancy to a subject.
What Is The Link Pointing From And To?
Similarly, if a link is on a page that is topically similar to the page being linked to, that also reinforces the topical authority of the destination page. If Page A on my fictitious hobby ecommerce site is about different craft hobbies, and Page B is about textile craft hobbies, it will help to reinforce Page B’s relevance to those seeking information about craft hobbies.
How To Assess Your Internal Linking Structure’s Effect On Topical Authority
Internal links can help a site’s topical authority by reinforcing the destination URLs’ topical relevance. They also help to ensure that any external authority signals are being passed to the correct internal pages.
There are calculations that could factor in the flow of link equity and authority through pages to assess the full impact of internal linking on a page’s topical authority. Calculations required include assigning value for position of link placement, click-depth from a topically relevant and authoritative page and topical authority of the links to the page where the link is coming from.
It’s a lot of math.
Instead, I’m in favor of keeping it simple, and defining a process that will allow you to get enough of an understanding of your website’s topical authority to make decisions from.
By looking at a sample of pages from your site across different topics, or if you are particularly focused, just one area of your topical authority, you can get an idea of any issues.
1. Identify Where Your Pages Are Getting Their Internal Links From
First of all, crawl your site, taking a sample of URLs. Export all of the internal links pointing to those pages, including their anchor text and URL the link is on.
2. Classify The URLs In Topic Clusters
Group all the pages into topical themes, i.e., for an ecommerce site that sells hobby equipment, “knitting, crochet, embroidery, and weaving” would all sit within “crafts” and the sub-category of “textile arts.” “Die cutting, digital cutting, laser cutting” would all sit within “crafts” and the sub-category of “cutting and engraving.”
3. Analyze What Proportion Of Each URL’s Followable Internal Links Are From Within The Same Topic And Outside Of The Topic
Using the exported links, for follow links only, match them against the URLs and mark them as “within” or “outside” their topical family
Divide the volume of links that are from the same topic by the volume of links in total. For example, for “examplehobbyshop.com/crafts/embroidery/intro-to-embroidery/, if the total number of internal links is 100 and the volume of internal links from categories that are within the “craft” family is 60, then it would be 60/100 = 60%
The rule I apply is, if the URL internal links from the same family are around 75% or higher, that suggests that internal links are helping solidify topical authority. If it is less than 74%, that suggests that there could be some improvement.
How To Assess How Your Links’ Anchor Text Is Contributing To Your Topical Authority
1. Extract The Anchor Text Of Links Pointing To Your URLs
When gathering the links pointing to a page, remove common links like static header navigation and footer links that stay the same on each page. Then, extract the anchor text or alt text for linked images.
2. Categorize The Relevance Of The Anchor Text Of Links
Next, you want to look at how on-topic the anchor text of the links is for the page they are linking to.
Classify each anchor text as “topically relevant,” “topically irrelevant,” or “generic.” Topically relevant anchor text will have great alignment with the subject of the linked-to page. Topically irrelevant anchor text will not show any useful reinforcement of the topic. “Generic” anchor text includes “click here” or pagination links.
For the URL, examplehobbyshop.com/crafts/embroidery/intro-to-embroidery/, the following internal links’ anchor text could be grouped as follows:
| Topically relevant | Topically irrelevant | Generic |
| “get started with embroidery”
“learn the tools needed to pick up embroidery” “want to try another fibre craft?” |
“beginners’ guide”
“start a new hobby” “try something new” |
“click here”
“next” “page 2” |
The goal is to have a lot of links from topically relevant pages pointing to the URL using topically relevant anchor text.
Measure the relevance of the anchor text against the total volume of anchor text.
For example, if that page had 30 topically relevant anchor texts, 20 topically irrelevant, and 50 generic, of the total 100 internal links pointing to it, it would have a topically relevant anchor text score of 30%. So despite there being a high volume (60%) of relevant internal links pointing to it, only 30% of the links have topically relevant anchor text.
3. Identify The Intent Mix Of The Anchor Text
Next, you want to identify the intent of the anchor text.
When grouping the anchor text by topical relevancy, also consider the intent behind the anchor text. For example, is it suggesting the page you will go to after clicking on it is informational, commercial, or transactional?
This matters because it can lead to dilution of the page intent. If there is a wide spread of intent shown through the anchor text, it can lead to confusion as to the purpose of the page being linked to.
Following on from the previous example, if some of the internal links had the anchor text “learn more about embroidery,” but others were more akin to “buy all the tools you need for your first embroidery project,” it’s not clear if examplehobbyshop.com/crafts/embroidery/intro-to-embroidery/ is an informational, commercial, or transactional page. This suggests the anchor text has a high intent mix, which is not ideal. If the majority of the anchor text were aligned with informational intent, it would have low intent mix.
Together, you want the anchor text to show high topical relevance, and low intent mix.
Final Thoughts
By the end of your analysis, you should have an idea of the topical relevance of the source pages of the internal links and how their anchor text aligns to both the topic and intent of the page being linked to.
Scaling this across a larger volume of URLs means you can start to see how topical relevance and authority are being strengthened or diluted via internal linking.
Once you have an idea of weaker areas of your site, you can begin to optimize anchor text and link sources to reinforce the value of the linked-to page as a source of authority on a subject.
More Resources:
- 8 Metrics To Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Internal Linking Strategy
- Sentence-Level Semantic Internal Links For SEO
- Google Shares Tips To Improve SEO Through Internal Links
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
