Earlier I posted “3 reasons to keep writing“. If you were really smart you may have noticed the URL.
What happened? Did I lose track? Am I concussed from going over the bars again? Drinking and Blogging again?
Nope. I just decided after writing that post to pull reason #4 out and give it it’s own post.
The 4th Reason to keep blogging is simply to have content to refer back to later. Want something that sounds more scientific? Deep Internal Linkafication or DIL for short. How’s that? I just made that up.
Seriously though, you’ll notice in the course of a post I might reference a thing or two that I wrote earlier. (I did it in the first sentence!)
I do that for a few reasons. Here’s why you need content for DIL
- While post “A” is about the big picture of a particular topic you might have already written about the three sub topics that make up the big picture (let’s call them post X, Y and Z). Readers might understand two of those (but which two?) and be thankful for your link to the in depth sub topic you wrote earlier.
- In linking to my other posts I can use wonderful ‘anchor text‘ that might be chock full of keywords. (ooops I did it again – Brittany) Google sees this and likes it.
- Internal linking keeps the reader on your site longer. The more time they spend the more they are apt to grow to like you. With deeper content, your readers will see your breath of knowledge. That builds two things; affinity and authority. Because of this, the more people spend on your site the more they are apt to become your next client. We all want to work with experts and even better, people we like. Besides, Google thinks Time On Site Matters!
- Google sees my original post, and it sees the links to the other ‘related’ posts. It appreciates my content and increases my “Authority” for those pages.
Google hopes to give sites that are an authority in a specific industry, community or space a ranking boost. So if you are an authority in the medical or travel spaces, Google hopes that related queries will return your site above less authoritative web sites. – SearchEngineLand
NOTE: There’s also plugins out there that show related posts at the bottom. That is not DIL but it does lead to perhaps an extend time on the site. How often do you click on those? How often do you click on Anchor Text?
HINT: If you want to crush your competition – look at their site. Do they publish a unique post a month? Ever? Create your personal editorial calendar and get writing. Write more than they do. Make sure that when you do, you write about the stuff that your future clients might be searching for.
You may have heard me say this at a conference, “If you write one post a week at the end of the year you know what you’ll have? 52 more pages indexed in Google than the person sitting next to you”. Start writing!
Internal link scorecard: 4
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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