Any advice on optimizing internal linking structure. I'm working with a pretty big website that includes an established blog...
A very good example of internal linking structure is Wikipedia. Learn from there, how Wikipedia internally linked all pages.
As rozerr said, one good example of internal link optimized structure is Wikipedia. Here are some tips to start with: - Interlink your blog posts (you said you have an established blog - cherish it - find authoritative posts and pass some of their link juice to your important pages/blog entries). - Don't forget - the most important page on your website is (or should be) the homepage - link from it to your "conversion" pages - the landing pages (services webpage, download page). - A good tactic to keep the visitors engaged with the content on your blog, and optimize internal linking is to add a "Read more" plugin on your blog with suggestions on posts on related topics. - Use your website footer - even though it's below the fold, if a visitor can't find what he's looking for in the main navigational menu, the second place he'll look is the Footer. Hope this helps!
What software is your blog based on? You should obviously link to the important pages from ever page. However the importance rating in sitmaps helps determine how Google distributes internal link juice on your site.
A few things to consider here are the anchor texts and the PageRank of the internal pages . You could use some onpage optimization software to see the current interlinking structure and the anchor texts, and then improve on the existing pattern by: - Providing links between relevant pages using respective anchor texts - Beefing up important landing pages that you want to rank for certain keywords with internal links from high PR pages. However, I would be careful here. Perhaps I'd put one or two links per page here only, unless they're site-wide or something - If the blog doesn't show "Related posts" at the end of the blog, I'd add this feature. - Make sure you don't have any unlinked pages on the site, unless access to them should be restricted for some reason.
The optimal structure for a website would look similar to a pyramid (where the big dot on the top is homepage): This structure has the minimum amount of links possible between the homepage and any given page. This is helpful because it allows link juice (ranking power) to flow throughout the entire site, thus increasing the ranking potential for each page. This structure is common on many high-performing websites (like Amazon.com) in the form of category and subcategory systems.
I too agree the points of @Kianu42 but you can check this points for your addition of interlinking 1.While interlinking make use of good relevant keywords to the article you’re linking to. 2.Don’t start linking every other post to your recent post it will irritate users try to link only relevant posts and only if its necessary. 3.Try to add link to 2 old post in first 2 paragraph of your post and 1 link to the last concluding para of your post 4.You can make use of WordPress Plugin InSight or seo smart link plugin to quickly interlink your older posts based on keywords.