Internal linking explained for business websites
An accountant’s website might carry a detailed page on Making Tax Digital, and a solicitor’s might hold a thoughtful guide to lasting powers of attorney, yet pages like these can sit almost untouched for years because nothing else on the site points to them. Internal links are the ordinary text links that take a visitor from one of your pages to another, and they are one of the few parts of search engine optimisation that sit entirely in your own hands. Added with a little care, they help people and Google find the pages that matter most.
In brief
- Google uses links to discover new pages and as a signal when judging how relevant those pages are.
- Google advises that every page you care about should be linked from at least one other page on your site.
- The words you link, known as ‘anchor text’, should describe the page they point to, so ‘click here’ helps nobody.
- A simple routine of mapping your key pages, linking from related content and checking Search Console keeps the job manageable.
What an internal link is
An internal link is any link from one page on your domain to another page on the same domain. Menus and footers are made of them, but this article is mostly about contextual links within your body copy, where a sentence about one subject naturally points to a page covering the next.
Google’s link documentation says that, generally, it “can only crawl your link if it’s an <a> HTML element (also known as anchor element) with an href attribute”. Standard text links added in a content management system are usually built this way, but buttons wired up with JavaScript alone can leave pages that look linked to a human and yet offer a crawler nothing to follow.
Why Google pays attention to your internal links
Google’s guidance on link best practice says “Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl.” Its guide to how Search works describes the discovery side in more detail, explaining that some new pages are found when Google extracts a link from a page it already knows, and giving the example of a hub page, such as a category page, linking to a new blog post.
That discovery role matters more than many owners realise. Google’s sitemap documentation notes that if your site’s pages are properly linked, meaning every important page can be reached through your menu or links placed on your pages, Google can usually discover most of your site. A sitemap can still help, particularly on larger or more complex sites, but it works best alongside sensible linking rather than instead of it. Internal linking is only one part of the picture, and our guide to SEO for business websites covers the rest.
The same link guidance puts the minimum standard plainly: “Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.” Pages with no internal links pointing to them are often called orphan pages, and in our experience they tend to appear after a redesign or when a blog has grown without much planning.
Internal links are for people first
The best links are the ones a visitor would want to click anyway. Picture an online homeware shop with a buying guide on choosing bedding. A reader who has just learned what thread count means is ready to see the duvet covers themselves, and a link from that paragraph to the right product category saves them hunting through the menu. Above all, it helps the customer take the next step.
This is where internal linking and good user experience overlap. Many of the points in our article on UX considerations for your website apply here as well, because a visitor who can move easily between related pages tends to understand more of what you offer before deciding whether to get in touch.
Anchor text, the words you choose to link
Anchor text is the visible, clickable wording of a link. Google’s documentation says this text “tells people and Google something about the page you’re linking to”, and asks that good anchor text be “descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on and to the page it links to.” It specifically warns against vague wording such as ‘click here’ or ‘read more’, and against cramming every related keyword into a single link.
Accessibility guidance points the same way. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.4, Link Purpose (In Context), is a Level A requirement that the purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone, or from the link text together with its surrounding context, with limited exceptions. A run of links that all read ‘find out more’ gives screen reader users very little to go on.
In practice, good anchor text reads as part of the sentence. An electrician’s site might say that it also carries out ‘electrical safety checks for rental properties’, with those words linked to the relevant service page, rather than tacking ‘click here’ onto the end of a paragraph. Vary your wording across the site rather than repeating one exact phrase, and keep in mind Google’s reminder that “the words before and after links matter”. Link wording can even feed into the headline Google shows for a page, which we cover in our piece on how Google uses title tags and meta descriptions.
A simple internal linking method any site owner can follow
You do not need an expensive SEO tool for this. For most business websites, a spreadsheet and an afternoon is enough to make a good start.
Start with the pages that earn you money
List the pages that matter most commercially, usually your main services or product categories, your contact page and anything that regularly produces enquiries or sales. These should be the best-linked pages on your site.
Group related content around each one
For each of those key pages, note the blog posts, guides, case studies and FAQs that relate to it. A training provider might group its first aid course page with an article explaining the difference between course levels and another answering common questions from employers. Each supporting piece should link to the main page, and the main page can link back to the best of them. This hub-and-spoke pattern is similar to the example Google gives of a hub page, such as a category page, linking to a new blog post.
Link when you publish, and look back as well
Every time you publish something new, add links from it to relevant existing pages, then go back to two or three older pages on related subjects and add a link to the new one. That second step is easy to skip, and it is often why new articles sit unnoticed.
Keep it natural
Google does not publish an ideal number of internal links per page. A long guide might carry eight or ten, while a short service page might need three. If a link would not help the reader at that point in the text, leave it out.
Checking what you already have
Google Search Console includes a Links report, and its internal links section shows the pages on your site that receive the most links from your other pages. Google’s help page suggests using it to confirm that core pages, such as your home page and contact page, are properly linked within your site, while noting that the report shows a sample rather than every link. If a key service page barely features, look into why. While you’re in Search Console, the rich result reports will show whether any structured data on your pages is being read properly.
A manual look often reveals the rest. Links to deleted pages, and menus still pointing at old addresses after a site move, waste visitors’ time, and they are among the wider issues we cover in our piece on the warning signs that a website needs a redesign. If your structure has grown piecemeal over many years, the most sensible fix is sometimes a proper rethink of how pages are organised, which is the kind of planning that goes into a new website from the ground up, and our notes on web design best practice set out the principles we follow.
Common internal linking mistakes
- Linking the same generic phrase, such as ‘our services’, to several different pages, which leaves readers unsure where each link leads.
- Linking every mention of a keyword, which makes copy harder to read and dilutes the links that matter.
- Forgetting that an image used as a link needs descriptive alt text, since Google says it uses the alt attribute of a linked image as the anchor text.
Getting internal linking working for your business
Internal linking rarely gets the attention a new design attracts, yet it shapes how easily a customer, whether booking a table at a restaurant or comparing accountancy packages, finds their way through your site. If you would like a second pair of eyes on how your pages connect, site structure and internal links are part of how we approach SEO services for our clients, and we look at the same routes through a site when we carry out conversion rate optimisation. Get in touch and tell us a little about your website.
Keep reading
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- 10 Questions To Ask a Prospective Web Design Agency
- Big Agency or Trusted Partner? What’s Right for Your Business
