Ethan Smith: The power of internal linking for SEO

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and internal linking for the growth of successful companies like MasterClass, Medium, and Upwork. It highlights the role of SEO expert Ethan Smith and his agency Graphite in helping these companies improve their online visibility and drive more organic traffic.

🙋 Q&A

[01] The Importance of Internal Linking

1. What are the three main types of SEO discussed in the article? The three main types of SEO discussed are:

• Programmatic SEO: Automatically generated web pages like product pages and landing pages
• Editorial SEO: Manually generated content like articles and guides
• Technical SEO: Website infrastructure, including site architecture, internal link structure, category pages, tags, redirects, and page speed

2. What is the role of internal links in SEO? Internal links play a crucial role in SEO by:

• Helping search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of a website's content
• Distributing "link equity" or "link juice" throughout the site
• Improving the user experience and encouraging visitors to explore more content
• Signaling to search engines which pages are most relevant for specific keywords

3. What are the two types of internal links mentioned in the article? The two types of internal links are:

• Contextual links: Hyperlinks within the body of content that lead to other pages on the same site
• Navigational links: Menu links in the header, footer, or sidebar that allow users to navigate to other pages

4. What are the four steps recommended by Ethan Smith to build an effective internal linking strategy? The four steps are:

1. Conduct an internal link audit to understand the current state of your site's internal linking
2. Identify your high-authority "crawl point" pages that bring in the most traffic
3. Find relevant content to link to your best-performing pages
4. Increase the number of internal links, using descriptive anchor text

[02] The Role of AI in Content Creation

1. What is Ethan Smith's view on using AI tools like ChatGPT for content creation? Ethan Smith believes that AI can be useful for certain parts of the content creation workflow, such as extracting structure, identifying topics and subtopics, and performing keyword research. However, he cautions against using AI for the actual writing, as the generated sentences may not be factually accurate. He emphasizes that Google's algorithm values quality, relevant content, and inaccuracies can negatively impact a site's performance and potentially harm users.