Local businesses work on the basis of word - of - mouth. That's how small businesses start and then gradually grow. Now, suppose that the web is the world, and your website needs a connection. The many pages on your site are the networks and must be internally linked.

It's something like one page linking to another and another page linking to another chain that may interest the reader and keep him tuned into your site.

Here are some simple steps that should help you building SEO initiatives for your internal links:

STEP 1: REVIEW YOUR WEBSITE

The first step is to know your website and ensure that you are delivering on your commitments. Understand the usability and the service you are providing. After this, you can plan to add internal links wherever needed in the Structure. These may be referred to as structural links which help in navigation. They also ensure that your pool of great content do not go unnoticed. The least people should know what all you offer.

STEP 2: DETERMINE YOUR GOALS

What all do you want to do on your site? What are you committing to provide? If your website is a music blog, for instance, you should have sections to news, blogs, interviews, current affairs, events, PRs etc. and these sections should be internally linked. A PR page should link relevant updates to previously published News articles and so on and so forth. This entirely depends on what your goals are. So, setting your goals before your aspirations is important.

STEP 3: BUILD INTERNAL LINKS

Once the initial internal structure and goals are set, it's time to start building on the internal links. Now, these internal links cannot be specific or pre planned. They are dynamic. What we are trying to say, is that, your website has many pages. These pages can be linked to each other on various grounds through content. This is known as contextual linking, which is known to do well with readers and the search engines.

For example: You are blogging about a product. In an ideal contextual linking scenario, you should link from any relevant word about the product in your text, to the product page on your website. This way, your page ranks can improve, visibility improves and users stay connected to your site

STEP 4: OPTIMIZE LINKING

The key to success is to optimize your efforts and reap the most benefits from your linking activities. Which are your prime keywords? Are they getting the correct attention? Is important information on your site not being visited by users and do you want to shift to focus on them?

These are some questions you should answer and optimize your linking strategies by linking to the appropriate keywords and targeting them better.

Moreover, while linking internally, it's also wise to make use of codes like NoFollow to avoid creation of duplicate content on your page and to direct traffic to specific pages which need the attention.

These basic steps can help improve your page ranks and visibility. But it all depends on how you accomplish the task. Too many internal links can adversely affect your website because frankly, the user is also not going to enjoy so much hyper linking! Consulting a SEO company or a consultant strategist could prove beneficial; after all, it's important to make the right moves and create a win win situation!