Internal Linking Is Simpler Than It Sounds

Internal linking gets talked about like it requires a strategy document and a spreadsheet. For most sites, it doesn't. The core idea is pretty straightforward once you strip away the jargon.

What it is

An internal link is a link from one page on your site to another page on your site. When you reference something on one page that you've covered more thoroughly somewhere else, you link to it. When you publish something new and it relates to something older, you link between them.

The reason it matters for SEO is twofold. First, search engines discover pages by following links. Every page you care about should have at least one link pointing to it from somewhere else on your site, otherwise crawlers may never find it and it may never get indexed. Second, links pass authority. Pages that have earned strong external backlinks can share some of that strength with other pages through internal links.

What it looks like in practice

You publish a new blog post. Before you hit publish, you find two or three existing pages on your site that relate to it and add a link to the new post from each of them. Then in the new post itself, you link back to those pages where it's relevant.

That's most of it. The practice builds on itself over time -- the more content you have, the more natural linking opportunities appear.

The anchor text, the words you hyperlink, should describe where the link goes. "Click here" tells nobody anything. "B2B content strategy guide" tells both the reader and Google exactly what they'll find.

A few things to avoid

Orphaned pages -- pages with no internal links pointing to them -- are a real problem. Search engines struggle to find them, and they tend not to rank regardless of content quality. If you have old landing pages or campaign pages that are still live but not linked from anywhere, either link to them or take them down.

On the other end, don't overdo it. A page stuffed with links is hard to read and dilutes the value of each one. Link where it genuinely helps someone follow a thread, not just to rack up connections.

For smaller sites

If your site has 20 or 30 pages, you don't need a tool for this. Think about it when you publish something new, and revisit it occasionally when you update older content.

For larger sites, a crawler like Screaming Frog will show you which pages have no inbound internal links, which is usually the right place to start. But most sites I work with are well within the range where a quick manual review every few months is enough.

The goal is a site where every page that matters is reachable from at least one other page, and where the links that exist help someone navigate. That's a pretty achievable bar.

Further reading: Google's documentation on link best practices is short and comes straight from the source.