Guide · SEO
Internal Linking: How to Link Your Pages for SEO
Internal linking means pointing your own pages at each other with clear anchor text, so visitors and search crawlers can find every page that matters. This guide covers what makes a link crawlable, how to write anchor text, how to plan a path through your site and a five-step check.
What internal linking is
A link on one of your pages that points to another page on the same site is an internal link. Visitors use these links to move around. Search crawlers use them to find pages and to learn how your pages relate.
Google says that paying attention to the anchor text of internal links helps both people and Google make sense of your site. It also says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.
That second point is the base of the whole job. A page that nothing links to is hard for anyone to find. Start there, then improve the quality of each link.
Make every link crawlable
Google can usually follow a link only if it is an
<a>element with anhrefattribute. Links built in other ways may not be read. Google lists these as not recommended: an<a>tag with no href, a<span>used as a link, and a link that runs only through a script event such as onclick.A link added by JavaScript is fine if it uses the same plain markup. Check that the web address in the href points to a real page. A
javascript:address is not recommended.Test it on your own site. View the page source or use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. If you can see a normal anchor with an href, a crawler can follow it.
Write anchor text that tells the reader where the link goes
Anchor text is the visible words of a link. Google describes good anchor text as descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it points to.
Here is a quick test from Google. Read only the anchor text, out of context. If you cannot tell what the page is about, the text is too vague. Words like "click here", "read more", "page" and "article" fail that test.
Weak anchor Better anchor Why Click here our guide to keyword research The words say what the next page is about Read more how to read a Google Analytics report Short, and the reader knows what to expect We wrote a long piece about fixing slow pages for mobile visitors and why it matters fixing slow mobile pages A few words work better than a whole sentence Do not cram in every keyword you can think of. Google warns that forcing keywords into anchor text goes too far, and that keyword stuffing breaks its spam policies. Write the way you would speak, and let the words around the link add context.
Also keep links apart. Google advises against chaining several links in a row, because readers cannot tell them apart and each link loses its surrounding text. Finally, make links easy to spot. Do not style them so they look like plain text.
Sources: Google Search Central, Link best practices; Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide: write good link text
Build a path from general pages to specific ones
Google's starter guide says navigation helps visitors find content quickly and also helps search engines see which pages the site owner treats as important. It suggests you plan from the home page. Ask how a visitor gets from the general page to the page with the specific answer.
For an agency site, that might run from the home page to a services page, then to a page on one service, then to a case study. Each step should be one clear link.
Google names a few helpful tools for this:
- Breadcrumbs, a row of links at the top or bottom of a page that lead back to broader pages.
- A simple site map page for people, listing the pages in a clear hierarchy.
- A hierarchy that flows naturally from broad topics to narrow ones.
There is no magic number of links per page. Google says that if you think a page has too many, it probably does. Do not add links that give the reader no help.
Sources: Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide; Google Search Central, Link best practices
A five-step internal linking check
Run this on any page you want people to find. It takes about ten minutes.
Step What to do Pass if 1. Find links in Search your site for the page's address At least one other page links to it 2. Check the markup View the source of one link It is an anchor with an href 3. Read the anchors Read only the link words, out of context You can tell what the target page covers 4. Add context links List related pages a reader might need next Each is linked in a sentence that explains why 5. Trim the clutter Look for links with no use for the reader Each remaining link helps someone navigate Do step 1 first. If a page you care about has no links in, fix that before you polish anything else. A new page needs at least one link from an older page, ideally from a page that already gets visits.
Keep the work steady rather than rare. Each time you publish a page, add a few links to it from related pages. Over a year, that habit does more than a single big clean-up.
Sources