Internal Linking: How to Structure Links Across Your Site

Internal linking is the practice of linking from one page on your site to another page on the same site. Menus, breadcrumbs, footer links and links inside your articles are all internal links.

They do two jobs at once. They help visitors find the next useful page, and they help search engines discover your pages, understand how they relate and judge which ones matter most.

Key takeaways

• Internal links help search engines discover pages, understand what each page is about and work out which pages are most important.
• A good structure keeps every important page within a few clicks of the homepage and links related pages to each other.
• Anchor text should describe the page it points to in plain words, without repeating one exact keyword everywhere.
• Orphan pages, which have no internal links pointing to them, are hard for crawlers and visitors to find and should be linked or removed.
• Linking from your most linked pages to your most valuable pages is the quickest way to pass authority where it is needed.

What is internal linking and why does it matter?

Internal linking is how the pages of one website point to each other. It matters because a page with no links to it is close to invisible, both to people and to crawlers.

It helps to separate internal links from external ones.

Internal links do three things for search:

• Discovery. Crawlers move through a site by following links. A new page linked from a well crawled page is found quickly.
• Context. The words in the link, and the text around it, tell search engines what the target page covers.
• Importance. A page that many of your pages link to looks more important than one linked once from an old archive.

External links bring authority into the site. Internal links decide where it goes next. If you are working on link building, a sound internal structure is what lets those hard won links benefit more than one page.

How should you structure internal links across a site?

Structure your links as a shallow hierarchy with sideways connections: the homepage links to main sections, sections link to their pages, and related pages link to each other. No important page should be buried more than about three clicks from the homepage.

Think in three layers.

1. Navigation links. The main menu, footer and breadcrumbs. These set the skeleton and appear on every page, so reserve them for the sections that matter most.
2. Hub links. A hub, or pillar page, introduces a subject and links to every detailed page beneath it. Each detailed page links back to the hub.
3. Contextual links. Links inside the body text, from one article to a closely related one. These carry the most meaning because the surrounding sentence explains why the link is there.

Take an illustrative example: a company selling accounting software. Its "Invoicing" hub links to guides on late payment, invoice templates and recurring billing. Each guide links back to the hub, links to one or two sibling guides where relevant, and links to the invoicing product page. A visitor and a crawler can both reach everything on the subject from any starting point.

This hub and spoke pattern is also the backbone of topical authority, because it shows search engines that your pages on a subject belong together.

A few placement rules help:

• Link early in the page when the link is important, not only in a "related posts" block at the bottom.
• Link deep. Point to specific guides and product pages, not always the homepage or contact page.
• Keep links useful. A handful of relevant links beats dozens that distract the reader.
• Use real HTML links with an href. Links that only work through a script click may not be followed by crawlers.

How do you write good anchor text for internal links?

Good anchor text tells the reader what they will get if they click, in a few plain words. Anchor text is the visible, clickable part of a link.

Compare these:

• Weak: "To learn about invoice templates, click here."
• Better: "Start with one of our free invoice templates."

Guidelines that hold up:

• Be descriptive. Use words that match the topic of the target page.
• Be varied. Internally, you can be more direct with keywords than you could with links from other sites, but the same exact phrase on every link looks mechanical. Natural variation reads better.
• Be consistent about targets. Do not use the same anchor text to point at two different pages. That sends mixed signals about which page should rank for the term.
• Keep it short. A phrase, not a whole sentence.

How do you find and fix internal linking problems?

Find problems by crawling your site and comparing the result with the list of pages you want indexed. A crawler such as Screaming Frog, or the site audit in Semrush or Ahrefs, will report most issues, and the Links report in Google Search Console shows which pages receive the most internal links.

Work through them in this order:

1. Broken internal links. Links pointing to pages that return an error. Update the link to the correct page or remove it.
2. Links to redirects. If a link points to an old address that redirects, change it to the final address. Chains of redirects waste crawl effort and slow visitors down.
3. Orphan pages. Pages in your sitemap or analytics that no internal link points to. Link to them from a relevant hub, or decide they are no longer needed.
4. Deep pages. Important pages that take many clicks to reach. Add links from a hub or from higher level pages.
5. Under linked priority pages. List your most valuable pages, then check how many internal links each has. Add contextual links from related articles.

To check the work, crawl again and compare the counts of broken links, orphan pages and click depth. Over the following weeks, watch impressions and average position in Search Console for the pages you linked to.

Which pages should you link from and to first?

Link from the pages that have the most authority to the pages that matter most to your business. That usually means from pages with strong backlinks or steady traffic, to product, service or key guide pages that rank just outside the top results.

A quick method:

1. In a backlink tool, list your pages with the most referring domains.
2. In Search Console, list valuable pages sitting on the second page of results.
3. Where the subjects genuinely relate, add a contextual link from the first list to the second.
4. Each time you publish, add links to the new page from at least two or three existing pages, and link out from it to related ones.

Frequently asked questions

How many internal links should a page have?

There is no fixed limit on internal links per page. Add as many as genuinely help the reader, and stop before the page becomes a list of links. A long guide can carry many more than a short product page.

Do internal links help SEO?

Internal links help SEO by letting search engines find pages, understand their subject and gauge their importance within the site. They will not make a weak page rank alone, but a strong page with no internal links is at a clear disadvantage.

What is an orphan page?

An orphan page is a page that no other page on the same site links to. Crawlers may only find it through a sitemap or an external link, and visitors cannot reach it by browsing. Fix it by linking to it from a relevant page, or remove it if it serves no purpose.

Is exact match anchor text safe for internal links?

Exact match anchor text is generally fine for internal links, because you are describing your own pages. The risk is in overdoing it: identical keyword anchors on every link read poorly and add little. Mix in natural variations that still describe the page.

Internal linking is unglamorous work that pays back steadily. If you would like help mapping the structure of your site, start a conversation.