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Internal Links, while being crucial for the success of an SEO campaign, receive little to no credit. Perhaps this blog will help change that. Search engines and users use some links to navigate your site. Internal links, thus, guide search engines and human visitors to the pages you want to rank. In this guide, I’ll tell you all about internal links: what they are, why they matter, the different types, how to set them up, and best practices to boost your SEO efforts. So, buckle up, folks, we’re about to enter the SEO wonderland.
An internal link in SEO is a clickable hyperlink that redirects users from one page on your website to another page of your website. It helps both search engines and users navigate complex and large websites with multiple pages and sections with ease. In fact, such is the impact of internal linking in SEO that 42% of marketers spend as much time on internal links as they do on external links.
Internal links are a far cry from external links, which redirect users from your website to another website.
For example, if you link the term ‘SEO tools’ on one page of your website to another page about ‘SEO tools’, that can be considered an internal link. Search engine bots, such as Googlebot, follow these links to discover and index content. Pages without any internal links, also known as ‘orphan pages’, can be challenging for search engines to find and rank.
Good internal links make your site easier to crawl and help distribute SEO juice liberally among your pages.
In the red corner, internal linking is the practice of linking one page of a website to another page on the same site. It helps users navigate your website easily, keeps them engaged, distributes link equity across pages, and allows search engines to crawl your website and understand your site structure more effectively.
In the blue corner, external linking is the practice of linking from your website to a different website, often to sources, references, or additional reading that support your content. The main purpose of external links is to enhance credibility and user trust, especially if you’re pointing to any high-authority or well-known sites.
Let’s pit them against each other and see how they differ.
| Basis | Internal Linking | External Linking |
| Destination | Another page on the same website | A page on a different website |
| SEO Value | Distributes SEO juice internally | Builds credibility and trust if pointing to high-quality sources |
| User Experience | Encourages exploration of your website | Validates your content by providing sources and references |
| Control | Total control over link destination and anchor text | No control over the external site status |
Internal links are a crucial component of any successful on-page SEO strategy for several reasons.
Secondly, internal links help establish a clear structure and hierarchy on your website. By linking pages together, say, linking a category page to its subpages, you create a hierarchy or pyramid of content that’s easy to navigate for search engines as well as human visitors.
Internal linking in SEO passes authority and SEO juice across your website. The link value of each page is split among its links. Pages that receive a high number of internal links, especially from high-authority pages such as the homepage, tend to gain more SEO juice and rank higher.
Internal linking in SEO that uses appropriate anchor text, such as ‘what to expect from an SEO company,’ tells search engines what the linked page is about. It’s never a good idea to have a generic or ambiguous anchor text in your content. A descriptive anchor text with an internal link can improve its ability to rank for related queries.
Search engines don’t crawl every page on your site every time they visit. They’re bots after all, and have their own limits. Internal links tell these tired bots what’s important, helping them prioritize the pages that matter, rather than spending the entire time crawling unimportant pages.
Rather than waiting for organic traffic or external backlinks to come your way, you can simply fast-forward the process through the use of internal linking. Internal links are a great way to jumpstart visibility. They point search engines directly to what’s important, and help them rank your pages better.
Internal links enhance the user experience by directing visitors to relevant pages. It increases the time they spend on your website and reduces the bounce rate.
In short, well-placed internal links tell the search engines which pages are important and help your site perform better.
Firstly, it helps search engines discover and index pages on your website. When search engines crawl a page, they follow the internal links on that page to find new pages of your website to crawl. Without enough internal links, some of your pages might never be found by the search engines.
Websites use different kinds of internal links to connect their content. Let’s dive into the said kinds of internal links.
Navigational links are a type of link that helps website users get oriented and access different parts of a website. These links are typically site-wide, meaning they can be accessed from any page or section of a website. They are usually located in the website header for easy accessibility and visibility. Their main purpose is to make it easier to both view the pages that a website consists of and to quickly navigate to the desired part of the website.
Contextual links are usually placed in the main body of the content on a webpage, rather than in its header or footer. Their main purpose is to expand on ideas and concepts, refer to sources, define and explain terms and technical jargon, or direct readers to other relevant content.
Breadcrumbs are internal links that help users track their location on a website and their distance from the homepage. You can usually find breadcrumbs at the top of internal pages, such as product pages or blog posts. Like all other kinds of internal links, they help users navigate through a website and find the information they’re looking for. They can use breadcrumbs to go one level up and continue their journey on the website, rather than clicking the browser’s back button.
Footer links are internal links placed at the bottom of a website. They connect all important pages. Much like navigational links, footer links are site-wide, too, since they appear the same on every page. The purpose of using footer links is to enhance website navigation, making it easier for users to access key pages without having to scroll back to the top of a page.
These internal links typically appear at the bottom of a blog post. Related content links redirect users to other pages on a similar topic. Their goal is to keep readers engaged by offering them more content, such as the type they’re already interested in.For example: “You might also like What is Scheme Markup? Everything You Need to Know.”
Such links serve as a prompt that encourages readers to take action and engage with the website. The action might be anything from signing up to requesting a demo or learning more about a product or service. While their primary goal is to drive business and bring in leads, they also help structure your site’s internal linking.
An HTML sitemap is a separate page that lists all the main sections of your website, along with links to each section. HTML sitemaps are designed for human users, as opposed to XML sitemaps made for search engines.
These internal links enable users to navigate through multiple pages within a category or list. They usually appear as ‘next,’ ‘previous,’ or numbered buttons at the bottom of the page.
On platforms like WordPress, clicking on a tag or category takes you to a page listing all posts under that category or label. These platforms automatically generate such archive pages.
These pages contribute to your site structure by grouping and linking to all related content in one place. Plus, they encourage users to explore more on the same topic, and also give search engines a clearer view of your topical organization.
Fun fact: images can also be used for internal linking. Image or internal media links are clickable images that lead to other internal pages. They can be a great navigational tool, especially for e-commerce sites and visual galleries.
Setting up a solid internal linking ecosystem helps your website become search engines’ favorite by directing authority to the right pages across the website.
Here’s how you can leverage internal linking to make your website stand out.
Whether you’re building a new website or simply restructuring an old one, the first step is to decide on the internal linking structure you want to follow. Most websites follow a pyramid linking structure that naturally creates a top-down internal linking structure. In such a case, the homepage is at the top of the pyramid, the main sections below, and individual pages or posts at the bottom. You can also organize related content into clusters or ‘silos’ around core topics. A clear hierarchy makes it easier to link pages. It helps both users and search engines navigate your site more efficiently.
Once you’ve decided on the structure, it’s time to link. Start by linking your most important pages. Decide which pages you want to rank the most (e.g., a flagship service page or a detailed guide). These pages should have the most internal links pointing to them. To do this, link to these pages from various places: in-menu links, sidebar or footer links, and relevant in-text links on other pages. This approach helps guide visitors to some of the most important parts of our site architecture. You can link to whatever you like, but it’s best to link to the things on your website that you care about the most.
Internally linking to content that’s relevant to your website and pages helps provide elaboration or extra information to the reader about the topic you’re writing about. Particularly on technical pages, such as those related to SaaS SEO, readers may struggle to understand certain technical jargon. Internal links help provide context in such cases.
There’s another internal linking strategy called the ‘Pillar-cluster Model’. Under this strategy, you group related content around a central ‘pillar’ page. For example, a pillar page on ‘coffee machines’ could link out to cluster pages, such as ‘best espresso machines', 'coffee maker maintenance’, etc. Linking such subtopic pages back to the pillar page and to each other strengthens topical authority and builds clear pathways for the reader.
Internal linking in SEO is one of the best ways to establish site architecture and spread link equity. Properly structured internal links help search engine crawlers effectively discover and index website content. The following best practices will help you gain the maximum benefit from your internal linking strategy and avoid issues such as broken links and orphan pages.
Anchor text refers to the word or words you place the hyperlink over. The text provides context for search engines and human users about what the linked page is about. A good anchor text should be descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to both the page that it’s on and the page it links to. The better the anchor text, the easier it is for people to navigate your site and for search engines to understand what the linked page is about.
Internal linking isn’t simple redirection. When you link to another page on your website, you send authority and SEO juice from the linking page to the linked page. So, it’s important to link all your important pages, such as the homepage, as they are the most authoritative pages on your website. Linking important pages ensures that some of their authority and SEO juice trickle down to the less authoritative pages to which they may have been linked.
Using the same anchor text or even similar words for anchor texts on two different pages can leave search engines scratching their head. When search engines see the same anchor text on two pages, they think that both pages are on the exact same topic. Honestly, it’s equally confusing for human users as well. Instead, use different and descriptive anchor text for each page. For example, if you have two pages: one about a protein-rich chocolate bar, and another one about a low-carb chocolate bar, then you shouldn’t use the anchor text ‘chocolate bar’ for both pages. Instead, make the difference between the pages clear by using different anchor text.
Internal linking in SEO doesn’t mean randomly stuffing a page with links. The placement and density of the internal links have to be calculated and deliberated. As a rule of thumb, putting internal links towards the top of a page can reduce your bounce rate and improve the dwell time (the amount of time users spend on your website).
In the world of SEO, there are mainly two broad categories of links: dofollow and nofollow links. Dofollow links distribute authority between websites. NoFollow links are a way of saying that the originating website doesn’t recommend the destination website. Search engines look at the type of link when determining whether to pass on website authority. Ideally, when you use internal links, you want to pass authority around your website, and dofollow links are the way to do that.
Internal linking is to on-page SEO what Robin is to Batman; it’s an important part of the team but receives little to no credit. Internal linking in SEO is a fundamental practice used by digital marketing experts worldwide that ties your pages and content together, improves the crawlability of your website, and helps it rank higher in search results. To sum it all up, strategically placed internal links and a well-planned site structure can significantly boost your site’s search performance and user experience.
An internal link is a hyperlink that connects one page to another page of the same website. It is an important part of technical SEO that helps users navigate your site easily and helps search engines discover and index your pages better.
The fundamental difference between the two is that internal links connect different pages within your own website. In contrast, external links, also known as backlinks, point a user from your website to another website. You can control the internal links, while other sites give external links. They serve different purposes as well. Internal links help distribute link value throughout your website, while external links bring new authority from external sources.
Ideally, you should link to the pages you want to rank (basically, your cornerstone or high-priority pages). For example, if you have any product pages or comprehensive guides on your website, they should get as many internal links as possible from related blog posts and other pages. You can also link related pages, such as sibling or topical pages, to increase relevance.
While there’s no number set in stone, it’s a good practice to include only as many links as are useful and relevant to your page. Avoid stuffing dozens of links on a single page, and focus only on the ones that are important for user navigation and SEO.
Of course, they do. Internal links are an essential part of any successful on-page SEO strategy. They signal to search engines which pages are important and show how the content on various pages of your website is related. They also allow crawler bots to discover pages, prevent any orphan pages, and distribute SEO juice to the pages you want to boost.
An orphan page is a page that has no internal links pointing to it. It makes it harder for search engines to find it through normal navigation while crawling, making it hard to index. To avoid orphan pages, you need to make sure that every important page is linked from at least one other page on your website.
