Have you ever skimmed through a web page and come across certain topic referenced in the text that you’d love to know more about? Maybe it was some unfamiliar slang, a shocking current event, a famous person or some cheeky pun. The text isn’t linked to anything so you right clicked on the text, dragged your cursor to select it all and then copied it onto your clipboard so that you could search the phrase in a new tab. If you’re like me, you probably do this every day. While it would make life so much easier if the text was linked to something, we’ve become accustomed to do the copy-paste lookup method. Believe it or not, unlinked text is untapped value for website owners and I’ll tell you why.

Cross Linking Makes for a Better Browsing Experience

Recently I was reading an article about my favorite football club, Liverpool FC, and how they’re in the process of hiring a new manager to replace the legendary Jürgen Klopp. The article mentioned that one of the finalists, Arne Slot, is an up-and-coming manager currently with the Dutch Club, Feyenoord. Regrettably, I don’t follow much Dutch football and had no idea who Slot is. The article didn’t provide much background information on him either, so I was left to my own devices. Naturally I did what anyone else would do I and went straight to Wikipedia to get some background information on the incoming coach. I knew that the Wikipedia article would give me details about his managerial record, his playing days and even info about his personal life.

In this scenario, I would have been great if the article I was skimming had linked to more information about Mr. Slot. It didn’t and I was forced to look elsewhere and left the sports website entirely. While I don’t know the specific goals of said sports site, I suspect that they likely generate revenue through advertisements. Those advertisements command a higher premium the long someone like me spends browsing the site. Had the website elaborated on Mr. Slot’s credentials or cross linked his name to their own webpage about him, I would have spent more time on the site due to the improved experience. The key takeaway is that website owners can use cross linking to improve the browsing experience for users like me.

Cross Linking Establish Relationships Between Content Pieces

The benefit of cross linking is not strictly reserved for users. While a link on the part of the sports website would have enhanced my browsing experience, it would have also established a relationship between the article I was reading and the hypothetical web page about Arne Slot.

Search engines use crawlers, robotic computer programs that scan website content, to make sense of websites. These crawlers navigate from page to page by loading the anchor text links contained within the source code. Crawlers then account for the links’ frequency and position establishing relationships between content pieces and ultimately factoring these signals into its algorithm. The algorithms are used to match content to users’ searches.

Search engines, including Google, view webpages receiving more links as more authoritative. This does have some caveats such as link quality and repetitiveness, but in most cases links are extremely beneficial and a foundational part of any SEO program.

Cross Linking is a Foundational Part of the Internet

If you investigate the early days of the Internet, you’ll quickly see that links were the mechanism that allowed information to be shared digitally at scale. Similar to how a road connects differing regions to one another so that they can exchange resources and information, links have served the same purpose. By cross linking one page to another, you’re building a “digital road” users can take to access new areas and information. This has been the basis of the Internet since day one.

Conclusion

The next time you are crafting a webpage or blog article, I would encourage you to include some links on the text most likely to elicit curiosity among your users. Whether it’s a reference a football club or some tribal knowledge about Internet’s inception, you make your users’ lives much easier by including links. You’ll even strengthen the relationships between content pieces that search engines might use to rank your website too.