Internal linking

What it means

Internal linking means links between pages of the same website. It includes the main menu, footer, breadcrumbs, links to related articles and products, and links within the text. For readers they lead to further information; for search engines they are a map showing how pages relate and which matter most.

Search engines discover new pages mainly by following links, so a page with no internal links pointing to it, an orphan page, can struggle to get indexed even if it is in the sitemap. Links also pass some authority between pages: a page with many links pointing to it is seen as more important.

Descriptive anchor text in internal links tells search engines what the target page is about. Thematically connected pages together build the site’s topical authority: instead of isolated articles, a network forms that covers the subject in depth.

How it works in practice

Our glossary is an example of deliberate internal linking. Each term has curated related terms chosen by meaning rather than alphabet, plus links within the explanation using inflected anchor text. No page is left orphaned, and a test checks this with every change.

For company websites we recommend linking from blog articles to service pages and back, connecting related articles and, from the strongest pages such as the home page, linking to the pages meant to generate enquiries. Links should make sense to the reader rather than being scattered at random.

When restructuring a site or changing URLs, internal links must be updated too, not just redirected. Links that pass through chains of redirects slow the site down and weaken the flow of authority.

What to watch out for

A common mistake is automatic linking that points every occurrence of a word to the same page. The text becomes cluttered, readers get lost and search engines may see it as manipulation. Fewer but relevant links work better.

The second mistake is several pages on the same topic linking to each other with identical anchor text and competing for the same keyword. That creates cannibalisation, where no page is strong. Linking should make clear which page is the main one for a topic.