Let's say I have a page dedicated to Dogs and obviously the word "dogs" would probably appear very often on the page. If I made each of those link to the that page that they're on, would that at all help? or serve 0 purpose.
Yes! Google looks for that and it will make you rank higher. But you must also have external links from other sites to get the full benefit.
Good keyword rich internal links are definitely a good idea. foreclosureking is right in saying that you will still need external links. Yahoo in particular loves internal links.
I just want to clarify that you understood what I was saying. So if my site (i.e. animals.com/dog.html) has the word dog 10 times on that page and if each of those "dog" terms links to the exact same page (animals.com/dog.html), that would help with SEO?
No I doubt it would help to have the exact same word linked multiple times on the same page. It would also look spammy. One link using a certain link anchor text is enough for a page. When search engines count number of links, they are counting the number of pages that link to your page. Sorry for misinterpreting your original post.
That would probably prove to be very irritating for your readers, who click on the "dog" link and it takes them to the top of the very page they are already reading.
Thank you for the comments. However, I am only curious as to what the SEO effects would be. I understand how readers would perceive it.
SEO is ultimately about pleasing your user. Write your pages FOR your reader. They don't want to read in hyperlinks so don't write like that. The links won't have much/any SEO effect.
It will serve a great purpose in helping you rank for the word dog. Internal linking is very powerful!
I agree with the previous posters that any SEO benefit you might gain by such a tactic would be MORE than negated by the extremely poor user experience. I would bounce right back to Google and go to another site if I ran across that type of situation... That being said, I actually do this on every page on my site at least once... for some pages I might do it 2 or 3 times on the page. But I do it in such a way that it doesn't affect the user experience negatively. Everyone here does it on at least some of their pages... They just might not realize it. It is a side affect of having navigation structures on your site. Example 1: If you have a global navigation that appears across the top or down the left of every page on your site linking to the major sections on your site... then you do it. When you you click on one of those links in the global to go to Section X of the site, it takes you to the Section X page... The global navigation is still there. If you click on Section X again, it takes you right back to the page you're on. But users know intuitively that this happens because it's a navigation link NOT a contextual link. So it doesn't matter from a usability perspective. Example 2: Your site may also include footer links as well. I use footer links so that if the user has scrolled down the page, they don't have to scroll back up to the top to navigate to another major section. I also use them because I don't have room in the global navigation to link to all major sections of the site. The same links that appear in my global navigation also appear in my footer. Since my global navigation has limited real estate, I can only link to my most important 6 sections of the site. So in the footer I link to those same 6 sections of the site again plus the other 10 or 12 major sections that are slightly less important. This also means every page on my site passes my most important 6 sections of the site twice the PR that they pass the lesser important sections of the site since they appear in the header and footer of every page on the site. Now if I click on Section X in the top nav and navigate to the Section X page, I have 2 links on the page that link to the current page - one in the top/global navigation and one in the footer. I make sure that they both target the keyword phrase(s) that appear in the <title> element of the page, but I vary the top nav and footer link text slightly. IMO varying link text is far better than having all your links use the exact same link text, especially for internal links since YOU control your internal link text. Example 3: Every page on my site has a breadcrumb. Breadcrumbs are great for the user experience. They give the user a sense of where they are in your "tree" or web site, and provide easy navigation back up your site tree. Breadcrumbs are typically implemented one of two ways: Home -> Grandparent Page -> Parent Page -> Current Page or Home -> Grandparent Page -> Parent Page -> Current Page I recently switched from the first type of breadcrumb to the second type JUST so that I could have one more link where I can vary the link text for every page on my site. If it's a mid level page (not a leaf in the tree but a branch or fork) then it means multiple pages will link to the page with that breadcrumb link text. Since every page has a breadcrumb, if I navigate to Section X now then the breadcrumb will be: Home -> Section X Now I have a link in the global nav to the current page with one keyword phrase as the link text, a link in the breadcrumb for the current page with a slightly different variation of the keyword phrase, and a link in the footer with a third slight variation of link text. For example, if I had a mortgage site, for example, maybe the global navigation has "Mortgage" as the link text, the breadcrumb for the page might be "Mortgage Home Loans", and the footer link might by "Mortgage Loan". These 3 different link texts will help me rank for lots of slight variations of terms for a mortgage - "mortgage", "mortgage loan", "mortgage loans", "mortgage home loan", "mortgage home loans", "home loan", "home loans", "home morttgage loan", "home mortgage loans", etc. In all 3 examples above where the links point to the current page, it is VERY obvious to the user that all 3 links point to the same page... They know clicking repeatedly on a navigation link in the header or footer for the page you're on will simply reload the same page. People all know the last item in a breadcrumb (whether hyperlinked or not) represents the page you're on... It's intuitive. Anyway, as I said it happens on every site due to navigation structures whether consciously or not... It can be done tastefully without negating the user experience, but still helping from an SEO perspective. But what you are proposing makes absolutely no sense from a user perspective.
Well as explained by Canonical, it does help but should be done efficiently Also one more thing to add it also helps to pass PR to your internal pages , if you are linking a page internally within your website then by linking a page from high PR will pass on the PR juice to your another pages as well Thanks,
sorry for not spending words but I think this is wat u want http://www.searchenginejournal.com/in-text-home-page-links/ http://www.searchenginejournal.com/keyword-rich-internal-anchor-text-how-much-is-too-much/