Internal Linking: Thinking Inside The Box - Using footer links to get an extra kick
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Footer links are almost standard at the bottom of every Web page. They are placed there for a reason. Should the spiders not be able to fully crawl a site, or the visitor not be able to easily navigate the site, the footer links facilitate movement around the site.
As an opportunity to use good keyword rich link anchor text, footer links are a real boon to your site optimization efforts. In fact, the anchor text choice can enhance even the often neglected Home and About Us pages. At the very least, the anchor text for Home should be Business Name Home. The anchor text for About Us should read, at minimum, About Company Name.
While more powerful link anchor text than the site title would be a better choice, at least use of the company name points those pages out in a clearer fashion for the site visitor. If the company name includes a targeted keyword, some added search engine benefit is derived as well. In any case, the better link anchor text will assist in maintaining the overall site theme. Note that the footer anchor text places some extra keyword density on the page.
Link anchor text ties the site themes togetherWhen creating internal site links, the single most important thing to remember is to always use keywords in the anchor text that reflect the theme of the receiving page. The use of keyword relevant link anchor text is especially important to link-obsessed Google, but is also valuable for higher rankings in Yahoo and MSN Search.
The choice of wording for clickable links on the site map, the site menus, and the page footers should reflect the targeted keywords for the linked-to page. The link anchor text tells the search engines what is the important theme for the page being reached by the link. If the receiving page is targeted and optimized for red widgets, the link anchor text should reflect that goal.
Link text for blue widgets would only be half as effective, and should be reserved for linking to the blue widget page. Don’t use the link text of red widgets for the clickable link to any pages other than the red widget page. Diluting the anchor text drops the total value to the receiving page by sending what amounts to mixed messages to the search engines. Keep the anchor text relevance clean and concentrated to the targeted page only.
The link anchor text is even more effective if the page receiving the link has the anchor text in its title tags -- and even in the page unique URL. Of course, the on page content should include the keyword phrase at the appropriate density. The overall benefit is derived from the concentration of theme relevance.
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