Key takeaways
- Internal links help search engines discover pages, understand them and judge their importance.
- Organise pages into hubs and spokes, with commercial pages as the best-linked hubs.
- Use descriptive, natural anchor text in body copy instead of ‘click here’ or ‘read more’.
- Link new content to older pages and back again, so nothing valuable becomes orphaned.
Internal links should follow the way your business and your topics are organised. Done well, they let Google find every important page, see how pages relate to each other and work out which ones matter most. Most of the work comes down to four habits. Link from relevant body copy using descriptive anchor text, point supporting content at your key commercial pages, keep those pages within a few clicks of the homepage, and make sure no useful page is left without links.
What internal links do for SEO
An internal link is any link from one page on your domain to another page on the same domain. Your main menu, footer, breadcrumbs, product grids and the links inside your articles all count. They do three jobs for SEO.
Discovery
Search engines find most pages by following links. A page that nothing links to is hard for crawlers to find and will probably be crawled less often, even if it is in your sitemap. Internal links are the main roads crawlers travel.
Understanding
Links carry context. The anchor text, the sentence around it and the topic of the linking page all tell search engines what the destination page is about and how it fits with your other content. If a set of articles about kitchen design all link to your kitchen installation page, it is obvious what that page covers.
Importance
Pages with more internal links, particularly from strong and relevant pages, are generally treated as more important within your site. Google’s original PageRank concept described this flow of value through links. Today’s algorithm is far more complex, but links still signal importance, and internal links are one of the few ranking signals entirely in your hands.
Internal links matter for people too. They take visitors from a question to an answer, from the answer to a service and from the service to an enquiry. If the links make sense to a reader, they usually make sense to a search engine.
The main types of internal link
| Link type | Where it appears | Main purpose | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Menu | Header menu, mega menu | Sitewide access to key sections | Overloaded menus that link to everything |
| Footer | Bottom of every page | Utility pages, contact, policies, key services | Long lists of keyword-stuffed links |
| Breadcrumb | Above the main content | Shows hierarchy, links to parent pages | Breadcrumbs that do not match the real structure |
| Contextual | Within body copy | Connects related content with meaningful context | Vague anchors such as “click here” |
| Related content | End of articles, product pages | Helps readers continue their journey | Automated suggestions that are only loosely related |
| Pagination and listings | Category and blog archive pages | Lets crawlers reach items deeper in a list | Important items buried many pages deep |
Contextual links usually carry the clearest meaning, because the words around them explain the relationship. Menu links matter for structure and access. You need both, and each should be there for a reason.
Start with structure
Before adding individual links, decide how the site should be organised. For most businesses a hub-and-spoke structure works best.
- Hubs are your key commercial pages. For a service business these are the main service pages, for a shop the category pages, and for a business with several branches the location hubs.
- Spokes are the supporting pages, such as sub-services, product pages, guides, FAQs, case examples and articles that answer specific questions.
- Links run from the hub to its spokes, from each spoke back to the hub and between closely related spokes.
Topic clusters use the same structure, and it fits a semantic SEO approach where related content is grouped and connected by meaning.
Keep important pages shallow
Click depth is the number of clicks it takes to reach a page from the homepage. There is no magic number, but commercially important pages should be easy to reach, usually within a few clicks. If a crawler report shows your best-selling category or main service page six or seven clicks deep, fix it with menu changes or contextual links.
How to choose anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text of a link, and it is one of the strongest clues you can give about the page it points to.
- Be descriptive. “Our guide to choosing roof insulation” is far more useful than “read more” or “here”.
- Match the destination. The anchor should describe what the reader will find. A mismatch confuses people and search engines alike.
- Vary naturally. You do not need the same exact-match anchor every time. Phrasings such as “emergency boiler repair”, “fix a broken boiler” and “boiler breakdown service” give a fuller picture between them.
- Keep it readable. Anchors should fit the sentence. If a link has to be forced in, it probably does not belong there.
- Avoid using the same anchor for different pages. If “kitchen design” links to two different URLs on your site, you are blurring which page is the authority on that topic.
Building your internal linking strategy step by step
- Crawl your site. Use a crawler to list every URL, the number of internal links pointing to each, their click depth and any broken links. Export the data to a spreadsheet.
- Identify your priority pages. List the services, categories or products that bring in revenue. These should end up as the best-linked pages on the site.
- Find orphan and weakly linked pages. Compare crawled URLs with your sitemap and analytics. Pages with no internal links, or only one or two, either need links pointing at them or, if they no longer serve a purpose, merging or removing.
- Group pages into topics. Assign each page to a topic hub. Pages that do not fit any hub may reveal a gap in your structure or content you no longer need.
- Add hub-to-spoke and spoke-to-hub links. Make sure every hub links to its key supporting pages, and every supporting page links back to its hub within the body copy.
- Add sibling links where they help. Link related supporting pages where someone reading one would find the other useful.
- Fix technical issues. Repair broken internal links and update links that point to redirected URLs so they go straight to the final destination.
- Review the menu and footer. Make sure menus put the important pages first and are not cluttered with dozens of minor links.
- Build linking into your publishing process. Every new page should link to its hub and at least one related page, and you should add links to it from relevant existing content.
Most businesses skip that last step. New articles go live with links going out, but nobody goes back to older pages to add links in, so the newest content ends up the least connected.
Finding internal link opportunities
Once the structure is in place, look for natural places to add contextual links. These methods work well.
- Site search. Search Google with “site:yourdomain.co.uk” plus a topic phrase to find pages that mention a subject and could link to the main page about it.
- Search Console. For a priority page, check the queries it ranks for, then search your site for pages that discuss those topics but do not link to it.
- Your strongest pages. Pages that attract external links or lots of visits are good places to add links to pages you want to boost, as long as the link is relevant.
- Content audits. When you refresh an article, check its links as part of the update.
Take an accountancy firm with a strong article on registering as self-employed. That article is an obvious place to link to the firm’s self-assessment tax return service, its bookkeeping service for sole traders and a related guide on allowable expenses. A newly self-employed reader is likely to want all three, and each link ties the article to a page that earns the firm money.
Internal linking for different types of site
Service businesses
Make each core service page the hub of its topic. Link guides and FAQs to the relevant service page, link service pages to related services where customers commonly need both, and link to location pages if you actually operate in several areas. If you serve a defined area, our article on ranking higher locally in Cardiff covers how location pages and local signals fit together.
Ecommerce sites
Categories are usually the hubs, which is why category linking is a central part of ecommerce SEO. Link from parent categories to subcategories, from categories to their best products, and from products back to their category through breadcrumbs. Buying guides should link to the categories and products they discuss. Be careful with filters and faceted navigation, which can create huge numbers of crawlable URLs with little value.
Content-led sites
Blogs often rely on date-based archives, which push older posts deep into pagination. Topic hubs and well-kept related-article links stop useful older posts from disappearing. Planning those hubs carefully is a large part of building topical authority, because it shows how thoroughly your content covers each subject.
Common internal linking mistakes
- Orphan pages. Important pages with no internal links, often landing pages or older articles, are hard for search engines to find and value.
- Generic anchors. “Click here”, “learn more” and “this page” waste one of your clearest relevance signals.
- Linking everything to everything. Dozens of links per page, many of them irrelevant, blur the meaning and make content harder to read.
- Linking to redirects and broken pages. These waste crawl effort and frustrate visitors. Update links after any URL change.
- Relying only on the menu. Menus matter, but contextual links tell search engines far more.
- Competing pages. When several pages target the same topic and receive similar links, search engines struggle to choose. Consolidate and point links at one clear page.
- Nofollow on internal links. There is rarely a good reason to nofollow your own pages. If a page should not be indexed, use the appropriate directive instead.
- Links hidden in scripts. Links should use standard HTML anchor elements with an href so search engines can follow them reliably.
Protecting internal links during redesigns and migrations
Redesigns are where internal linking most often goes wrong. A new theme arrives with a simpler menu, a different footer and a fresh blog template, and pages that were well linked suddenly lose most of their connections. Rankings slip, and because the content has not changed, nobody can see why.
Before any website redesign, crawl the existing site and record how many internal links each priority page receives and where they come from. Then crawl the new version on a staging site and compare the two, looking for the following.
- Priority pages that have lost menu or footer links.
- Contextual links in old body copy that were dropped when content was migrated.
- Links that now point to old URLs and rely on redirects.
- Related-content modules or breadcrumbs that have disappeared from templates.
Fix these before launch, not after. Once the new site is live, run another crawl to confirm nothing important has slipped through, and keep an eye on Search Console for pages that drop out of the index.
Measuring the impact
Judge internal linking changes over weeks and months rather than days. The main things to watch are below.
- Crawl data. Fewer orphan pages, reduced click depth for priority pages and no broken internal links.
- Indexing. Previously unindexed pages being crawled and indexed, visible in Search Console’s Page indexing report.
- Visibility. Growth in impressions and queries for priority pages and their topic clusters.
- User journeys. More visitors moving from articles to service or category pages, and from there to enquiries or purchases, which you can track in analytics.
Record what you changed and when. Other work usually happens at the same time, so a basic change log helps you tie any improvement back to the change that caused it.
An afternoon’s work on your internal links
Internal linking is one of the easiest parts of SEO to control, and one of the most neglected. Group your pages into clear hubs, make your commercial pages the best-linked on the site, use descriptive anchors in body copy, give orphan pages a home, and add links both ways every time you publish something new.
On a small site, an afternoon with a crawler and a spreadsheet is often enough to fix the worst gaps. Start with your five most important commercial pages, count the internal links each one receives, and add contextual links from the articles that should be pointing at them.
Older sites with years of content and a redesign or two behind them usually need more than that. We review link structure as part of our technical SEO audits, alongside crawlability and indexing, and hand over a prioritised linking plan your team can keep up.
How Eigme can help
Turn this into results.
We can help you put this into practice with a clear plan, hands-on delivery and reporting in plain English.
Book a free strategy call →Frequently asked questions
How many internal links should a page have?
There is no ideal number. Include as many links as help the reader, which for a typical article might be a handful of contextual links plus the menu. Focus on relevance. Link to the pages a reader would most likely want next, and avoid stuffing pages with dozens of loosely related links that blur the meaning.
Do internal links help rankings?
Internal links help search engines discover pages, understand what they are about and judge their relative importance within your site. That can support rankings, especially for pages that were previously poorly linked or orphaned. They work alongside good content, technical health and external links, and will not secure positions on their own.
What is an orphan page?
An orphan page is a page on your site that no other internal page links to. Search engines may only find it through a sitemap or external link, and may crawl it rarely. Visitors also struggle to reach it. Fix orphan pages by linking to them from relevant content, or consolidate or remove them if they no longer serve a purpose.
Should I use exact-match anchor text for internal links?
Descriptive anchors that match the destination topic are helpful, and internal links carry less risk than external ones. Even so, natural variation reads better and gives search engines a fuller picture. Use clear, accurate phrases that fit the sentence, and avoid using one anchor for several different pages.
Are footer and menu links as valuable as links in content?
Menu and footer links are important for site structure and access, and they help define your key sections. Contextual links within body copy usually carry clearer meaning because the surrounding text explains the relationship. A good internal linking strategy uses both, with contextual links doing most of the topical work.
