Internal links are the links from one page of your website to another. They’re easy to overlook because they’re so ordinary: menu items, buttons, a “read more” here and there. But they’re one of the few SEO factors you have complete control over, and they cost nothing.
They do three jobs. They help Google discover your pages. They signal which pages you consider most important. And they help visitors get where they need to go, which is the part that pays the bills.
Here’s how to approach them without overthinking it.
How internal links help
When Google crawls your site, it follows links to find pages. Pages that are linked from lots of relevant places look more important than a page buried five clicks deep with a single link to it. The words used in a link, known as anchor text, also give Google context about the page being linked to.
For visitors, good internal links answer the question “where do I go next?” A reader of your guide on choosing a new boiler probably wants to see your boiler installation page. If there’s no link, many will simply leave.
Start with your structure
The foundation of internal linking is a clear site structure. For most small businesses, that looks something like:
- Homepage, linking to your main service areas.
- Service pages, each linked from the main menu and the homepage.
- Supporting content, such as guides, FAQs and blog posts, linking up to the relevant service pages.
- Trust pages like about, reviews and case studies, linked where they help someone decide.
As a rough guide, every important page should be reachable within about three clicks from the homepage. If your best service is only accessible through a dropdown within a dropdown, or not in the menu at all, that’s worth fixing.
Linking within your content
Menus and footers carry links on every page, which is useful but not very specific. The links within your written content carry more context. Some practical rules:
- Link where it genuinely helps the reader. If you mention a service you offer, link to it. If you reference a topic you’ve written a guide on, link to that.
- Use descriptive anchor text. “Our guide to choosing a heat pump” is clearer to people and search engines than “click here”.
- Vary it naturally. You don’t need the exact same phrase every time. Write as you’d speak.
- Don’t overdo it. A handful of well-chosen links in an article is plenty. If every sentence is a link, none of them stand out.
- Link from your strong pages. Pages that get lots of traffic or links from other sites can pass some of that attention on. Check which pages perform best and make sure they link to pages you want to boost.
Every guide or blog post you publish should link to at least one service page. Otherwise it’s doing the reading, but not the selling.
The hub and spoke approach
A tidy way to organise content is to group it around topics. You have one main page for a service, the hub, and several supporting articles around it, the spokes. Each article links to the hub, and the hub links to the most useful articles.
For example, a solar installer might have a main solar panel installation page, plus guides on planning permission, battery storage, maintenance and roof suitability. All of them link back to the main page and, where relevant, to each other. This makes the whole group easier for Google to understand as a subject you know well, and gives visitors an obvious path.
Common problems to fix
- Orphan pages. Pages with no internal links at all. Often old landing pages or blog posts. Link to them or remove them.
- Broken links. Links to pages that have moved or been deleted. They frustrate visitors and waste crawling. A site crawler or an SEO plugin can find them.
- Links through redirects. After a redesign, internal links often still point to old URLs that redirect. Update them to point straight to the current page.
- Two pages competing. If several pages cover the same thing and you link to them all equally, Google may not know which matters most. Choose one main page and link to it consistently.
- Important links hidden in scripts. Links should be normal clickable HTML links. Some fancy menus and buttons don’t use proper links, which can make them harder for search engines to follow. If in doubt, ask your developer.
A 30-minute internal link review
- List your five most important service pages.
- For each one, check it’s in the main menu and linked from the homepage.
- Search your own site for mentions of each service in blog posts and other pages. Add a link where the mention is natural.
- Check your most-visited blog posts. Does each link to a relevant service?
- Look at Search Console’s Links report to see which pages have the most internal links. If a page you don’t care about tops the list, adjust.
Getting more from your content
Internal linking is often part of a wider tidy-up. If your site’s structure needs rethinking, our technical SEO service can map it out properly, and our SEO content team builds linking into every article from the start.
