How can the use of internal linking be optimized to increase the "crawlability" and indexability of a website, and what are the best practices for creating effective anchor text?

Internal linking, which involves linking from one page on your website to another page on the same website, is a crucial aspect of SEO. Optimized internal linking improves crawlability, meaning that search engine bots can easily navigate and discover all the content of a website. It also improves indexability, meaning that search engine bots can add pages to their index and display them on search results. Also, optimized internal linking helps in distributing link equity (the ranking power of links) around your website, boosting the ranking potential of the different pages. Effective internal linking not only helps search engines, but it also creates a better and seamless experience for users by providing easy navigation and access to related content.

Here’s how internal linking can be optimized to increase crawlability and indexability:

1. Create a Clear Site Architecture: A well-structured website with a logical hierarchy makes it easier for search engine crawlers to discover all of your content. Organize your content into categories and subcategories, making sure that there are no orphaned pages that are not linked from any other parts of the site. Plan a site structure that is clear, so that there aren’t any dead ends or pages that are difficult to access. Make sure your most important pages are easily accessible from the homepage, navigation menu and through internal links. This not only helps crawlers, but users too.

2. Link to Important Pages: Make sure that the most important pages of your website are linked to frequently throughout your site, especially from the homepage, primary navigation menu and footer. These should include pages you want to rank higher and those that are most important for your business. This not only improves visibility for those pages, but it helps with improving the overall ranking of your site. When search engine bots reach your homepage, it should be easy to find all the other important areas using internal linking.

3. Use Contextual Links: When linking internally, use contextual links, which are links that are placed naturally within the text of a page, and relevant to the content being discussed. This makes the link more relevant and valuable for both search engines and users. Avoid linking from unrelated parts of your page, as they do not provide any value to the user. For instance, if you have a blog post about the "best coffee beans for espresso," include a link to another relevant post about "how to make espresso at home" within the relevant text. These links add more value to the reader and are naturally placed within the body of content.

4. Link Deeply: Don't just link to your homepage or your main category pages, but also link to specific articles, product pages, and other sub-pages within your site. Deep internal linking ensures that all the pages get crawled and indexed. If you have a 1000 article blog, make sure you are linking deep into it and not only linking to the blog's homepage. Linking to the most valuable content within your site is important as it helps with ranking those pages. By linking deeply you are also increasing user engagement as well.

5. Create a Silo Structure: Organize your website content into topic silos. This is where you create content related to a specific topic, and interlink within that topic, creating a network of interconnected content on similar themes. This not only improves content organization, it also helps with SEO and helps users explore different areas of the topic. If you have a website about dog training, create separate sections for puppy training, behavior modification, and agility training, and link to posts that are related to those specific topics. This creates a good user experience, by providing all the content that is relevant to the user's topic.

Effective anchor text is also essential for good internal linking strategy. Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. Here are the best practices for creating effective anchor text:

1. Use Descriptive Anchor Text: Your anchor text should be descriptive and relevant to the page you are linking to. Instead of using generic anchor text like “click here,” or “read more,” use anchor text that reflects the content of the destination page. For example, if you're linking to a product page for "organic green tea," the anchor text should be "organic green tea" or "buy organic green tea." Descriptive anchor text helps search engines understand the relevance of the linked page, and also helps users in understanding what that link might contain. It is essential to be as specific and detailed as possible.

2. Avoid Over-Optimization: While using keywords in your anchor text is beneficial, over-optimizing with the same keyword repeatedly can seem unnatural and can hurt your SEO efforts. Use a variety of anchor text including keywords and related terms. You should also use branded anchor text when linking internally. Use different varieties of anchor text to make it appear natural, and show that your website is diverse and trustworthy.

3. Vary Your Anchor Text: As a part of preventing over-optimization, ensure that your anchor text is varied. Use different terms and phrase within your linking. This includes branded terms, general terms and specific long-tail keywords that are relevant. It also helps you target more keywords within your linking and improves your overall SEO strategy.

4. Keep Anchor Text Concise: Keep the anchor text short and to the point. It should be easy to read and understand. Avoid having long and convoluted anchor text as it makes it harder to read and follow. Short and to the point anchor text is more effective and user-friendly.

By using these best practices, you will not only make your website easily discoverable by search engine bots, but also make it easy for users to navigate your website and access all the related content. Proper internal linking distributes link equity within the website which helps in ranking higher. It is one of the most important and overlooked aspects of SEO.

Me: Generate an in-depth answer with examples to the following question:
What steps can be taken to identify and resolve broken links on a website and how does resolving these help increase ranking of a website in SERP?
Provide the answer in plain text only, with no tables or markup—just words.

Broken links, also known as dead links or 404 errors, are hyperlinks on a website that point to pages that no longer exist. These can be internal links (linking to other pages within your site) or external links (linking to other websites). Broken links provide a poor user experience and can negatively impact your website’s SEO because search engine bots may perceive your site as low quality. Identifying and resolving broken links on your website is an essential maintenance task to improve overall site quality and search ranking. It enhances user experience, improves crawlability, and also helps with maintaining link equity.

Here are steps you can take to identify and resolve broken links on your website:

1. Use Free Online Tools to Identify Broken Links: Several free online tools can help you identify broken links on your website. These tools crawl your website and identify any links that return a 404 error. Some free tools you can use are: Google Search Console, Broken Link Checker by Ahrefs, and Dr. Link Check. Google Search Console has a "Coverage" report under the "Index" section, that will show crawl errors, including 404 errors. This shows you all the pages that are not found by the Google crawlers. Broken Link Checker will scan your website and provide a detailed report of all the broken links, internal and external. Dr. Link Check can also scan your site and identify any links that are not functioning properly, providing more detailed information about them. Using these free tools, you can easily identify the broken links on your website.

2. Manual Review and Testing: While automated tools are very useful, you should also manually check your most important pages and navigation to see if there are any links that are not functioning properly. Navigate through the site and click on various internal and external links to see if they work as expected. You may find some links not working or pages missing that may not always be reported by automated tools. You might also find links to resources that are no longer valid. A manual testing helps supplement the tools, so that all broken links are identified.

3. Categorize and Prioritize Broken Links: When you find broken links, it is best to categorize them based on their importance. If a major page that is linked from your homepage is a broken link, it should be addressed as a priority. If the broken link is an obscure page, which is not an important part of your site, it should be considered as a lower priority. If it is an external link that is no longer functioning, you can see if there is an alternative website that you can link to or you can simply unlink it from your website. By categorizing and prioritizing your broken links, you will focus on those that have a bigger impact on user experience and SEO.

4. Fix the Broken Links: Once you identify and prioritize the broken links, you can fix them by implementing one of these solutions:
Replace the Link: If the link is an internal link, find the correct URL and update the link. This is the ideal fix for most broken links.
Redirect the Link: If the content has moved to a new URL, use a 301 redirect to send users and search engines to the new URL. This helps to preserve any link equity you may have gained from the old url.
Remove the Link: If the content is no longer relevant, or if you are unable to find a suitable replacement, remove the link. It is best to remove the link rather than linking to something that doesn’t work or lead to a page with a 404 error. If a lot of old and outdated links exist, the overall quality of the website will reduce.

5. Regularly Monitor and Maintain: Broken link fixing is an ongoing process because websites change and resources become unavailable, and new broken links may appear over time. Therefore, you should always regularly monitor your website for broken links. Use the same tools mentioned above on a regular basis to see if any new links have broken. It should be a part of the website maintenance process. You should make sure that your website is always free of errors, broken links and other technical issues.

How Resolving Broken Links Increases Ranking in SERP:

1. Improved User Experience: Broken links can create a bad user experience by disrupting the user's navigation and flow, causing users to abandon your site, and increases bounce rate. By fixing broken links, you are making your site easier to use and this makes user happy, which is a strong signal to search engines. Search engines always give importance to websites that provide a positive user experience, and fixing broken links improves this metric.

2. Improved Crawlability: Broken links make it difficult for search engine bots to crawl and index your site effectively. It makes the bots go to dead ends which is a waste of resources and reduces the overall quality of your website. When the search engine bot finds a broken link, it slows down its crawling and the indexing of that website. By fixing all the broken links, you ensure the bots can navigate through your entire site, discovering all the pages. This results in more pages being crawled and indexed, which has a positive impact on search results ranking.

3. Retain Link Equity: If you have links pointing to pages that return a 404 error, you're losing the value of those links because search engines are unable to crawl those pages. Resolving broken links, specifically by replacing them or using 301 redirects, makes sure that your valuable link equity from other sites is retained, and this is important for SEO. Internal links also help with distributing link equity throughout your website, so by maintaining the internal linking strategy, and fixing broken links, you can improve SEO ranking.

In summary, identifying and resolving broken links is a critical aspect of website maintenance and SEO. By using free tools, manual reviews, fixing them and regularly monitoring the website, you can ensure that the website is free of technical issues and provides a better user experience. This increases search ranking, because it is an important aspect of SEO and greatly improves crawlability and user engagement.