1) Add links in your navigation or footer as text links
to all your important pages and main sections.

This is a very easy and an extremely effective tactic that not all sites do, and even
fewer do for maximum results. This is the first thing I look for when reviewing a website
for a client. Unfortunately, sometimes artsy Web designers add cool buttons, which are
images, to all the main sections of the site, but neglect to include text links as well.
Or a programmer decides to make the website’s navigation a dynamic drop down menu in DHTML
or JavaScript but forgets to include text links to the same pages represented in the menus.
Search engines cannot follow image links or links created in JavaScript, they can only
follow simple text links, so be sure you add them to your site as well.

So if you want search engines to visit and index (or record) ALL your website’s pages, be
sure there are text links pointing to all the main sections of your site and to all your
important pages.

2) Make use of the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag.

This is fairly simple. Google created this tag which tells them NOT to count the link in
their search engine ranking algorithm when used on a link. There’s debate that maybe Google
does count them a little, or will some day in the future. But for now, this tag does greatly
decrease a link’s value in Google’s eyes.

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com”>Your Website</a>

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com” rel=”nofollow”>Your Website</a>

Finally, if you have pages such as a privacy page, terms page, checkout pages or contact
pages that you don’t care if they rank well in Google, be sure to use the nofollow tag when
creating internal links to these pages.

3) Use descriptive & different phrases to point to
the same inner page.

The words that are in the text of a link (also known as the anchor text) affect your search
engine rankings. For example, the anchor text in the two links above is “Your Website”. If
enough of these links that were on quality and valuable sites, including your website’s
inner pages, pointed to the same page, it would eventually rank well in Google when someone
searches for the phrase “your website”.

Therefore, be sure to make the anchor text in all your internal links the phrases you want
the pages to be found for in Google. If you have a page that sells “blue widgets”, make the
anchor text in links on other pages within your website that point to this page “blue widgets”.
Do it like this:

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm”>Blue Widgets</a>

Going back to the number 1 tactic above, you would be far better off making the anchor text
in all your footer links as descriptive as possible. If you want to rank well in Google for
“affordable blue widgets” then use this in your links that point to this page:

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.htm”>Affordable Blue Widgets</a>

Finally, vary your anchor text when pointing to the same page within your website. For
instance, on some of your pages you could link to your Blue Widgets page with the anchor
text of “blue widgets”, then on other pages link to it using “affordable blue widgets” and
then maybe use “widgets that are blue”. This allows you to get the page ranked for multiple
terms and helps the user since you’re being descriptive and making your anchor text better
match the content of the page it’s on.

4) Make links in your content.

If you have text on your site, make some of the words within the text, links that point to
other pages within your website. For instance, if you have an article about blue widgets,
or a page that describes how great your blue widgets are, make the first or second occurrence
of the phrase “blue widgets” in the text a link that points to your Blue Widgets page.

5) The Home link solution.

If your website is typical, you’ll probably have a link on every page that points back to
your homepage. And you should because this helps users. By doing this, you’re supplying a
lot of link value to the homepage since it is getting all these internal links pointing
back to it. Since in the number three tactic I recommended that you make your anchor text
the same as what you want to rank for, the word “home” does you no good. I’ll assume that
you’re not trying to get your homepage ranked for the word “home”, so make the anchor text
what you do want it to get ranked for.

The other option is to add the nofollow tag to all your ‘Home’ links, thereby canceling
out the word “home” altogether.

6) Make important pages at most 2 folders deep with your
site and at most two clicks away from your homepage.

The farther away a page is, the worse it ranks. So if you put a page in a folder that is
five folders deep within your website folder structure, Google will likely consider that
page not as important as a page only one folder deep. Also, make the pages in your website
that are most important to get ranked two or less clicks away from the homepage. This is
good for users and allows Google to index these pages more quickly.