Internal vs external links

Hey guys,

I run a мedium publication with a few hundred articles. I have pretty good internal linking pointing to my key pages, Trying to make a good linking structure. And I have a decent amount of good external links too.

Everything seems fine and the articles rank ok, but my competitor that have less than 10 articles posted on their мedium account completely outranks my articles just by building backlinks and doing zero internal linking within мedium.

Does internal linking not necessary for мedium articles to rank? Is there a clear technical reason why good internal linking loses to no internal linking but lots of external links?

It feels like I waste time writing articles and doing internal linking. I’d focus on buying GPs like it is 2010 again It is ok but I try to understand technically why it is the case.

P.s. My hypothesis where that maybe мedium has some internal pages that ahrefs don’t see and they link to the account. Which makes the pages boost.

I refuse to believe that I just need to blindly build backlinks and ignore internal links. I was hoping that’s not what the SEO is these days.

I am not knowledgeable enough to give you the correct answer but I will share my experience here. When it comes to medium or any other parasite the process I follow is create relevant content that's easy to read. Then blast GSA contextual backlinks from any gig marketplace. Think with parasites backlinks is they drive traffic medium is nf but still you can rank it using this process and drive traffic.
Now in your case the problem is exactly the same as is with someone whose site is copied by someone and copied site ranks. SEO itself is a hit and trial process no matter what you do follow google's guidelines, experts or any trustworthy resources there is always a chance it can fail. My suggestion is try to replicate what your competitor is doing build links similar or more powerful than your competition. Internal linking is important and should not be ignored maybe you should check your keywords there could be a chance of keyword cannibalization. Use a content audit tool something like website auditor by seopowersuite or any other to compare content from both websites.

MAhKok said:

I am not knowledgeable enough to give you the correct answer but I will share my experience here. When it comes to medium or any other parasite the process I follow is create relevant content that's easy to read. Then blast GSA contextual backlinks from any gig marketplace. Think with parasites backlinks is they drive traffic medium is nf but still you can rank it using this process and drive traffic.
Now in your case the problem is exactly the same as is with someone whose site is copied by someone and copied site ranks. SEO itself is a hit and trial process no matter what you do follow google's guidelines, experts or any trustworthy resources there is always a chance it can fail. My suggestion is try to replicate what your competitor is doing build links similar or more powerful than your competition. Internal linking is important and should not be ignored maybe you should check your keywords there could be a chance of keyword cannibalization. Use a content audit tool something like website auditor by seopowersuite or any other to compare content from both websites.

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thank you!

Is there a tool that helps to analyze internal links, internal anchors and it’s surrounding text and provides suggestions?

curious_ said:

thank you!

Is there a tool that helps to analyze internal links, internal anchors and it’s surrounding text and provides suggestions?

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There are of course, but only they cost money.

internal linking is a thing and will always be as long as Google keeps the same main algorithm,
but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll rank better just with internal links, in most of the cases you'll not,
if you keep the current internal links and use the same number of links he uses, you should outrank him (with approx the same content ofc)

hideath said:

internal linking is a thing and will always be as long as Google keeps the same main algorithm,
but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll rank better just with internal links, in most of the cases you'll not,
if you keep the current internal links and use the same number of links he uses, you should outrank him (with approx the same content ofc)

Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks!
That's what I wanted to hear.

You need -good- external back links. Internal links are good for redistributing the juice from external backlinks.

Internal links are links that reference other pages on your site, while external links are any links that point away from your domain.
External links to your website are one of the biggest factors in the discovery and search engine ranking of your website.