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Keyword-Rich Internal Linking
The search engines, especially Google, place great importance on the words in the text linking to your pages from other sites and from pages in your own site. For several years, George W. Bush's biography on the White House web site was the #1 result for a search in Google for the keyword "failure," with Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, and others close behind. This was because so many sites took advantage of a phenomenon known as "Google Bombing" to make it #1. They did this by putting that word in a link from their site to that page. Google addresses this issue at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html. This was something of an embarrassment to Google, as some felt it reflected the company's political philosophy, so just recently (as of 2/2/07), someone tweaked things so that those results no longer show up. But it appears that they did so just for that specific result, and a few other well-known ones. Google still values keywords in link text.
The significance for you is that the same principle works with internal links. If you link to your internal pages with words like "home," you derive no benefit (unless you're selling homes). Replace those words with "keyword phrase home," if appropriate. This way, you're taking advantage of link reputation in internal linking on your Web site. Unlike external links, you have complete control over internal links. This is a powerful way to help your pages rank higher for your keyword phrases. Make sure the links are straight text links (as opposed to JavaScript links, etc.). Of course, you don't want to make your internal links look ridiculous. First and foremost, your Web site should be written for your target audience of human beings. But often, this can be done in ways that will boost your search engine rankings at the same time. One way would be to put links like "Home" at the top of the page, and longer, keyword-rich links at the bottom.
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