SEO for links

How and when to include links in your content

All pages should be linked to from either the navigation or a relevant category page. A category page groups individual web pages that have a similar subject or theme, for example, ‘Travel insurance'.

Evergreen content is content that you’d expect people to search for all year round, like a page about one of our services. All evergreen content should link back to:

• a relevant product page – this is a web page that explains a product or service you can get from Co-op, for example, ‘Order groceries online’ or a ‘Buy multi-trip travel insurance’ product page
• another piece or pieces of evergreen content, where relevant
• relevant seasonal content, for example, COVID updates that affect our products or services

You’d expect seasonal content to have peaks in search traffic because it’s about something temporary, like a blog post about celebrating Easter. Seasonal content should link back to:

• a relevant evergreen content piece
• a product page if necessary

Find out how to design links.

Guidelines on linking to other websites

You might need, or want, to link to other websites that are not owned by Co-op (external websites) in your content.

Any external websites you link to should be:

• high quality
• relevant
• trustworthy

Regularly review the links to external websites in your content and remove or update any that:

• no longer work
• now redirect to irrelevant content

Why links are important

Links are either to other:

• pages on the same website ('internal links')
• sites that are trustworthy ('external links')

Why internal links are important

Internal links:

• support the architecture of the website
• help Google understand the content

We should avoid creating ‘orphaned pages’, which are pages that do not receive any links from other pages on the same site.

This is because Google is unlikely to review ('crawl') orphaned pages and add them to its index. And this means they won’t appear in search results.

Why external links are important

External links:

• help Google assess the credibility of other websites
• can provide people with other useful information

When Google finds a relevant, good-quality link from one website it considers trustworthy to another, it takes this as a sign that the website being linked to is also trustworthy.

This means the site is more likely to be added to Google’s index and appear high up in search results.