Key takeaways
- Link from pages that already get attention to the pages you want found.
- Use descriptive link text that says what the destination is about.
- Every important page should be reachable in a few clicks and should link onward.
Internal links are the links between pages on your own site. They help visitors find what they need, they help search engines discover pages and understand how they relate, and they pass attention from strong pages to weaker ones. Most sites have far fewer useful ones than they think.
The method
- List the pages that matter. The ones that win customers: main services, products, key guides.
- Find the pages that get attention. Your most visited pages and the ones other sites link to.
- Link from the second list to the first, where it helps the reader.
- Check every important page links onward, to a related page and to a next step.
- Repeat when you publish. Each new page needs links in and links out.
Good link text
| Instead of | Write |
|---|---|
| Click here | Read our guide to local SEO |
| Learn more | See how technical SEO works |
| Our services page | Our services |
Link text that describes the destination helps readers and gives search engines a clear label for the target page.
Where links belong
- Inside the body text, where the reader would naturally want more.
- In a short list of related pages at the end of an article.
- In the main menu and footer, for the pages everyone needs.
- On breadcrumbs, to show where a page sits.
What to avoid
- Dozens of links in one paragraph, which makes each one worth less.
- The same exact phrase pointing at many different pages.
- Links to pages that redirect, error or are blocked.
- Important pages with no links pointing to them at all.
- Hiding links in text no visitor would see.
How to check
Crawl the site and look for important pages that are many clicks from the home page, or that have few links pointing to them. Our technical checklist includes this check, and the same crawl finds links that point to errors.
Make it part of publishing
Add a step to your publishing routine: when a page goes live, link to it from at least two relevant existing pages, and link from it to at least two others. It takes minutes and compounds. It is part of the content work we do for clients, and you can see it in how our own articles point to one another.