Imagine you’re doing some construction work, and you have to find a way to get the job done without nails because you don’t feel like using your hammer. That would be a ridiculous way to handcuff yourself and limit your success. Internal linking is one of the most powerful tools in your SEO toolbox. Yet it’s often overlooked.
If you do it right, interlinking helps search engines discover and understand your content, strengthens your site structure, and distributes authority to more of your pages.
It also guides your users to relevant content. This increases the likelihood they’ll stay longer, read more, and convert. Everybody wins! Except for the hammerless handyman.
Internal linking demands going beyond a few hyperlinks in blog posts to building an intentional network of connections between pages that supports your business goals and your content strategy.
That means knowing which pages to link, how to structure those links, which anchor text to use, and how to fix broken or weak spots in your current setup.
What are internal links?
Internal links connect one page on your website to another. They help users explore your content and help search engines understand how your pages relate to each other.
When someone clicks an internal link, they stay on your site. A link in a blog post that points to your pricing page is an internal link. So is a product page linking to a related item.
These links keep users engaged, guide them to high-value pages (or whichever pages you think are important to that moment in their customer journey), and distribute SEO authority across your site.
Search engines rely on internal links to discover pages. When Google’s crawler lands on a page, it follows internal links to find more content. Pages that aren’t linked to are called orphaned pages and they’re harder to discover. In fact, they may not get indexed at all.
Internal links also create structure. A well-linked site reflects a clear hierarchy, with broad, important pages at the top and more specific content branching off underneath. This helps both users and crawlers understand what your site is about and which pages matter most.
Internal links vs. external links
Internal links connect pages within your own website, while external links point to pages on other domains. Both serve different purposes.
Internal links guide visitors through your content, support your site’s structure, and distribute authority between your pages. An external link, on the other hand, helps provide context, cite sources, or build credibility by linking to trusted third-party sites.
Types of internal links
- Navigation links – These are found in menus, sidebars, footers, and other parts of your layout. These help users get around your site and highlight important sections.
- Contextual links – These are embedded in body content. They connect related pages and help search engines map the relationship between topics. They should be used liberally, but not indiscriminately.
- Image links – When you turn an image into a hyperlink, it becomes an internal link if it leads to another page on your domain. Google follows these as well.
- Call-to-action links – A button or phrase that prompts users to explore related content, sign up, buy, or take some other step that’s important to your business.
Internal linking vs. link building
Linking building generally refers to creating links on other platform, generally through networking with other site owners. You share relevant content with them and they add inbound links back to your site.
Why internal links are important for SEO
Effective internal linking plays a major role in how search engines discover, understand, and rank your content.
URLs with few internal links only see very few clicks on average from Google Search, whereas URLs with dozens of internal links (including navigation and other sitewide links) can see many more.
What is it about internal links that search engines find so attractive? Hint: it’s not their personality.
They help search engines discover your pages
Google discovers new pages by crawling links. When you publish a new page and a relevant internal link to it from a related page, it becomes much easier for Google to find and index it.
Pages that aren’t linked to (orphaned pages) can be ignored entirely, even if they’re in your sitemap. The assumption is that if you weren’t willing to link to it directly, it must not be that important.
They establish your site’s structure
Internal links form the backbone of your site architecture. They guide crawlers through your content in a logical way. This helps them understand how those topics relate to one another and which pages are central to your message.
Imagine you run a marketing agency with a blog. You have a pillar page called “Content Marketing Strategy” that gives a broad overview of the topic. Supporting articles cover related subjects like “How to Build a Content Calendar,” “Content Distribution Tactics,” and “Repurposing Blog Posts.”
Each of these supporting articles should link back to the pillar page and to each other, where relevant. This internal linking pattern will show Google that all of these posts are part of a unified content marketing cluster and that the strategy page is the central, authoritative resource in the group.
They distribute authority across your site
Pages with lots of external backlinks tend to have more authority. Internal linking allows you to share some of that authority with other pages on your site. This is often called “passing link equity” or PageRank.
When you link from a high-authority page to a lower-authority one, you help elevate the lower-authority page’s visibility in search results. The more internal links a page receives, the more important it appears in Google’s eyes.
They boost underperforming pages
If you have valuable content that isn’t getting much traffic, internal links can help surface it. Adding relevant internal links from strong pages to weaker ones increases their chances of being crawled, indexed, and ranked. Over time, this strategy can lift visibility for pages that aren’t earning backlinks on their own.
They improve crawl efficiency
Search engines don’t have unlimited resources, so they allocate a limited crawl to each site. Good internal linking helps prevent crawl waste by minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach key pages. This is especially important for large websites with hundreds or thousands of URLs.
They enhance user experience and engagement
While internal linking is great for SEO, it also helps people. As we know, what’s good for the user tends to be good for SEO.
When you guide users to related or useful content, they stay longer, visit more pages, and are more likely to convert. These engagement signals (like lower bounce rates and longer session durations) can support your SEO by telling Google that your site satisfies search intent.
8-step internal linking strategy for SEO
Since internal linking is so important to SEO, it needs to be part of your workflow. It needs to be considered before and after you create a piece of content. Many of these are straight from the mouth of Google.
- Plan your site’s structure: Map top-level pages and build hierarchy beneath them.
- Create topic clusters: Use pillar pages with supporting articles.
- Add contextual links within clusters: This linking strategy reinforces relationships and signal authority.
- Include navigational links: Surface your most important content.
- Put links high up on the page: Ensure visibility and crawl priority.
- Link to taxonomy pages: Reinforce categories and tags.
- Link from existing pages to new content: Prevent orphaned URLs.
- Use smart anchor text: Descriptive, varied, and keyword-aligned.
Auditing your existing links
We talked about creating new links, but what about your current links? You probably have countless links in place already that aren’t adhering to the rules outlined above.
You need a robust internal link analysis. It helps you catch problems that hurt crawlability, waste link equity, or confuse search engines.
Step 1: Fix your broken internal links
Links that lead to non-existent pages create a dead end for both users and search engines. They often happen when a URL changes or a page is deleted without updating the links.
Use a site audit tool to find and fix broken internal links and either remove them or update them to valid URLs. This is an easy way to restore lost value and improve the user experience.
Step 2: Edit pages with too many links
Pages with hundreds of links dilute the importance of each one. It becomes harder for Google to decide which pages are worth crawling and indexing. More importantly, it overwhelms users.
Now that you’ve planned your topic clusters, remove unnecessary links from pages with too many internal links. Focus on quality over quantity. Only include links that are relevant and helpful.
Step 3: “No follow” links that shouldn’t pass value
Some internal links aren’t important for SEO, like login pages, user profiles, or the shopping cart. You can add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to these so they don’t pass link equity.
But use this sparingly. Google often treats nofollowed links as a soft signal, and the link equity doesn’t automatically get redistributed to other links on the page.
Step 4: Fix any orphaned pages
Orphaned pages are URLs without any internal links pointing to them. This makes them hard to find and crawl.
Check for these in your audit tool’s internal linking report. Look for relevant pages where you can add contextual links to those orphaned URLs. If a page doesn’t need to be found, consider removing it or marking it as noindex.
Step 5: Keep crawl depth at three clicks or less
If a page is more than three clicks away from your homepage, Google may treat it as lower priority. Aim to keep important content within a few clicks of the homepage by tightening your site architecture and adding shortcuts from key pages. This helps crawlers reach important content faster.
Step 6: Eliminate internal redirects
Internal redirects waste crawl budget and slow down your site. If a page links to an outdated URL that redirects, update the link to point directly to the final destination. This removes unnecessary hops and keeps your link structure clean.
Step 7: Fix redirect chains and loops
A redirect chain happens when a link points to a page that redirects to another page, and so on. A redirect loop is even worse: It sends users in circles with no end.
Both slow things down, confuse crawlers, and eat into whatever crawl budget the search engine has allocated to your site. Replace links in your content so they go directly to the final destination.
Step 8: Point all links to HTTPS pages
If you’ve moved your site to HTTPS but still have links pointing to HTTP pages, you’re creating avoidable redirects and potential security warnings. Update all internal links so they point directly to the secure HTTPS versions.
Step 9: Rerun your audit quarterly
If you publish content frequently, poorly formed internal links can pop up easily, especially if you publish content frequently or change your site’s structure. Run a quick audit every few months to identify and fix problems.
Tools for smart internal linking
Like many marketing optimizations, the smartest way to manage your internal linking strategy for SEO is with an assistance or automation tool. Your best bets:
- Siteimprove - Audits your entire site to map out internal links, flag broken or redirected links, and identify pages with weak link structures. It also highlights orphaned pages and offers tools to track changes in engagement and conversions. The content briefs provide linking suggestion too, so building out clusters naturally becomes part of your workflow.
- Google Search Console - The Internal Links report shows which pages have the most incoming internal links.
Siteimprove helps you build and maintain a strong internal linking strategy by giving you full visibility into your site’s structure. It also comes with the tools to fix what’s broken.
Start with a full-site crawl using Siteimprove SEO Intelligence to identify broken links, orphaned pages, and pages with weak internal link coverage. Then, use Content & Behavior Analytics to prioritize your pillar pages based on traffic and engagement. This gives you the chance to focus linking efforts where they’ll have the most impact.
Siteimprove also supports smarter anchor text choices by validating that your links connect semantically related pages. And when it comes to technical SEO, Quality Assurance flags redirect chains, HTTP links, and other hidden issues that affect crawlability.
Finally, Siteimprove makes it easy to prove ROI. Track traffic and conversions on pages that received new links using custom dashboards. This helps you demonstrate exactly how internal linking supports performance.
