In-text linking between pages of same site: harmful?

[miked]

I have an educational site on which I plan to post links between pages in text in addition to the site's navigation system. Would be no more than 15 or so links per page, and to pages relevant to the subject being covered on the originating page.

Does anyone know if this would lead to penalties in SEO terms? Seems reasonable to me, as I often find it easier to navigate via in-text links, but then what's reasonable to us is not always reasonable to the search engine rulemakers...

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Mike.

 

[Ashton]

Not harmful, nearly all the big news related sites do it make sure its relevant to your users though!

 

[miked]

Thanks. I figured as much, just thought I'd better ask to see if I was missing something obvious. Or maybe I was having an attack of SEO paranoia... one of those moments where you think *anything* you do could lead to some incomprehensible penalty...

 

[Ashton]

Yeah I know what you mean, I actually don't focus too much on SEO, just avoid the obvious pitfalls.

If your in any doubt, look at a wikipedia article, loads of inter-linking in any article!

 

[TyslerSpider]

I pretty much do the same on my site. I have like 10-15 links per page in a footer navigation plus 2-3 internal links inside the blog post/page text. BUT - I only make a few of those dofollow. Maximum 3. And of course they vary from page to page. Why? Its called page rank sculpting. So you can promote certain pages of your site that you especially want to rank for or pass PR juice on to. Plus I do think that 18 dofollow links per single page is not looked favorably upon by Google - even if they are "just" internal. If you like you can do a search on internal PR sculpting. Now mind you, Im purely talking on-page links - not the link you have on a side navigation that goes for your whole site. (That doesnt get taken into account from what I understand)

 

[immediate]

Not at all. On the contrary, it's encouraged as it gives Google additional information about your site and pages as long as the keywords / anchor text used are genuine. Such kind of links are much more natural than navigation links.

 

[newguy]

I'd think it would be helpful rather than unhelpful. I tend to link without pages in a blog I run specifically to help ranking. Just make sure that the interlinking is relevant and useful to users.