How to build internal links – Is it critical for your food blog?

Is it so difficult to build internal links for your food blog? I mean if it is absolutely in our control then why we always so bother about building internal links. Are you thinking the same? You know, there are millions of food blogs or food-related blogs on the web and a few thousand food bloggers are highly active on the internet. That means you are actually fighting with the crowd and to be very honest to say that you can not survive only with creating good contents and taking the excellent quality of pictures. Those are no doubt important but not only key towards success. As with good content, recipes and excellent pictures you can defeat millions of bloggers but you can not beat those few thousand bloggers who are highly active on the internet, creating good SEO friendly content, recipes, posting great snaps and aggressively promoting their blog posts on various online platforms. So if your blog post is below just ten or twenty blog posts on search engine results pages (SERP) then also you will lose traffic or even will fail to survive. Then what will you do?

Is internal link building is critical for your food blog?

You have to act smart along with all your hard work. There are some important factors for improving your food blog SEO which is often ignored by many bloggers, not only that many pro bloggers are also ignoring such factors. But they may have succeeded because they are early birds, they started their blogging journey four-five years ago or even before. At that time there were not so many blogs on the web. Today take any blogging niche, you will find many thousands or even millions of blogs. So you need to find every opportunity to improve your blog’s SEO. Internal links building is one of those important factors. You can improve your blog’s SEO and increase your organic traffic by implementing effective internal links building technique.

If you own a food blog and running that blog since last one or two years but unfortunately you have not seen any significant growth then at the end of reading this post you may find the big mistake of your blogging journey.

What is internal links?

Do you really want to know this? or

You already knew this. Seasoned bloggers definitely know this, even a newbie blogger also knows this and follow some techniques to some extent to build internal links. But few people who have just started blogging or still thinking to start a blog, may want to know about internal links in details.

An internal link is just a URL added to a web page, it sends to another web page of the same domain name once the reader clicks on anchor text. Suppose you have two web pages, one is about garlic chicken and another one is lemon chicken. Now you want to add URL of the webpage about lemon chicken on the webpage about garlic chicken.

Now the technical structure of internal links

<a href=”webpage URL of your domain”>Anchor text</a>

Use the above mentioned code to add URL of your domain on a webpage of the same domain. But replace  “webpage URL of your domain” with a proper URL and replace anchor text with a word as per content of your webpage.

Why you should build internal links for your blog?

You definitely know the answer 😀 , so certainly you are not looking for an answer to this question. If you did not know the answer but I think after reading this post till now you certainly have come to know the reason to build internal links for your blog. Internal links pass the link juice and ultimately it helps to improve SEO of a blog. So ultimate goal is, getting more organic traffic.

But when you add a link to a web page that means you offer your readers to read more related posts what they want to read. So in return, you increase your page view without increasing the number of visitors. Not only that here you satisfy your readers by helping them to know things in detailed. Once you pleased your readers they will definitely start following your blog and you will get a loyal audience.

Is there any difference in internal link building strategy for a food blog and any other niche blog?

I think this is the first question what should come in your mind when you read the topic of this post. Haha. If it is then I am sorry that I did not answer it at the beginning. Okay, so what do you think? Is there any difference in strategy what you have found to build internal links for a food blog and another niche blog?

Okay let’s understand the issues related to food blog

• Food bloggers are the most crowded group. I mean, there are a huge number of food blogs on the web
• A food blog is full of recipes or food related content, so bloggers face difficulties to select related web pages (as all are apparently  related) to send readers from a webpage by using internal links
• Generally content for each food blog-post is very short as compared to posts from other niche blog

Now you can understand the importance of having a different strategy to build internal links for your food blog.

How to build internal links for your food blog?

Now at this stage, you are at such a position when you have certainly realized that you can place your blog better way in front of search engines and get better rank on SERPs by taking special care to build internal links for your food blog.

1. Number of internal links

Is there any limit on using links on your page?

Yes, it was a common question among the many bloggers and asked various times on different forums. It was those days when Google representatives sometimes suggested website owners to limit links up to a reasonable number but later they also said that there is no limit on the number of links used in a website post as if a content is too large then hundred links may be okay.

I always maintain a certain number of links based on content size, so that it does not look spammy. So add only backlinks of higher authority domain related to that post and rest leave to build internal links.

But if you have a food blog then you must have noticed that the size of content per post is very short because of your write-only recipes with a short story and sometimes without any story. So many bloggers get confused or hesitate to use more than 2 or 3 links. But I do not find any reason for hesitation to add more number of internal links. Because you are just adding some related other food recipes, so in such case, it will never look spammy if you add some more internal links of food recipes. It will actually help your readers to find some more excellent food recipes.

But effective internal link building is not possible until and unless you have written a decent number of blog posts. If you have just written only ten or twenty posts then wait till you write some more food blog posts to get a significant result from the internal link building strategy.

 

2. Selection of related web pages 

Selection of related web pages is the most critical task for internal link building. You just need to identify some food dishes or food recipes which as keywords searched on search engines at-least for 10K times monthly. Check this by using the Google Keyword Planner tool. So chances for getting maximum traffic for posts specific to those keywords. Then certainly your task will be constantly trying to get higher page authority for those pages first and get better page rank on SERPS.

So try to pass link juice for at-least 15 to 20 related web pages to each of those web pages. As long as your blog will grow then you should try to increase that number and pass link juice as much as possible from various other pages to those web pages.

You should also pass link juice from those targeted pages to other pages of your other target group of web pages to achieve higher page authority of those pages also.

For all other pages about less popular food or your special own developed food or any other food related content, you can pass some link juice. But as those are less popular and people do not search about that food, your aim will be to get some referral traffic for those food recipes or food related content. Promote those recipes on social media or other social bookmarking sites and get some free referral traffic.

 

3. Selection of proper anchor texts

Anchor text is a hyperlinked word or group of words on what if a reader will click then he will land on another web page. There is a close relationship with anchor text and web page URL. Wrong selection of anchor text will not only misguide your readers but also negatively effect on your blog SEO.

So how will you select anchor text for a web page specific to “chicken curry recipe” keyword? You can use below-mentioned anchor texts what will prefer.

Chicken recipe, Chicken curry, Delicious chicken curry recipe, Chicken curry recipe, favorite chicken dish, Chicken dish, recipe for chicken curry, detailed chicken curry recipe, step by step chicken curry recipe etc.

Use some variations in anchor text to send your readers to a particular post. If you use same anchor text everywhere for the same webpage then it will look spammy and search engine never like such spammy anchor texts.

 

4. Decide the relevancy of links

Is the content of added URL (or internal link) relevant to that page where you are adding that URL?

Search engines try to understand the content of each webpage based on links added on those pages along with some other factors. So you should not add any irrelevant links on a web page.

Suppose you are adding some links on a page about paneer butter masala, then you should definitely add some links of pages related to other paneer dishes. You can add links of pages related to any other vegetarian dishes too.

 

5. Play little aggressive 

If you want to get extra traffic to some specific pages due to your special interest then you can play little aggressive and add links to those pages on some popular posts of your blog. But do not pass extra link juice so that it affects negatively on your blog SEO.

 

Also read 
Best blog commenting guide to get backlinks from right blogs

Few words …

Do you follow any strategy to build internal links for your blog?

How do you control internal link building for each page from your food blog?

I believe that internal link building is a VERY VERY CRITICAL task for a food blogger. But over internal link building as well as under internal link building both are not good for any blog. Any improper internal link building may lead you to lose a significant amount of traffic.

Blogging needs some technical skill apart from your expertise in your niche. Hence sometimes it becomes stressful particularly when you are a newbie. Once you are under stress then you will never enjoy blogging and finally it will not good for your health as well as your blog’s health too. So always try to enjoy blogging and avoid stress because it may lead to blogger burnout (an helpful reading from a successful food blogger) and tragic end of your blogging journey.