Using Internal Links to Boost Rankings
Internal linking is an important, but often overlooked step in the search engine optimization process. While having only internal links pointing to a page is not going to earn you a top position ranking for any ultra-competitive keyword, it could be enough to drive you to number one for long-tail keywords and less competitive terms. So let's take a look at the different methods you can use to point internal links to your web pages and boost your rankings.
Navigational (Menus)
Navigational links are included in the menus found at the top of your site, on the left or right hand side, and the footer of each page. These links appear on hundreds or thousands of pages of your site giving you a lot of keyword rich anchor text for a specific page, but you also have to think about the user. Don't stuff links in the menu that they are not going to find relevant.
One of the problems with navigational links are that you are limited in how many you can use. Obviously, you don't want every single page on your site to link to every other one. Unless you have a really small site you would run out of room quickly. Most of your navigational links should point to your category or tier two pages using the keyword anchor text you are really wanting to target for that page.
If you are using relational menus you can change the anchor text used in your navigation on the different menus used for each category. This will give you a boost for any slight variations of the keyword, but you have to be careful when using this technique. You don't want to make a drastic change and confuse the user.
Context (Within the Content)
Contextual links are included in the body of the content that you write. You can use these links to direct the reader to more information about a subject or to anything else that's relevant. I have found a single contextual link is given more weight than an individual menu link.
It's important to make the contextual links appear naturally in your content. You don't want to keyword stuff your content just to give yourself a chance to link to a page using a certain anchor text.
If used the right way contextual links can provide a big boost to your site. Think of Wikipedia. They do a massive amount of internal linking across their site and as a result they rank very highly for a wide variety of keyword terms. They do not stuff these keywords into the text, the author writes naturally and links to relevant pages wherever it fits.