Internal linking means the links from one page of your website to another page of the same website, whether in the menu, the footer, a breadcrumb trail or the body of the text. They are how visitors find their way around, and one of the clearest signals you control about which pages matter most and what each one is about.
How internal linking works
Search engines discover most pages by following links. A crawler lands on your homepage, follows its links to the pages they point at, follows the links on those, and so on. Each link also passes some of the authority the linking page holds, often called link equity, so a page linked from many important pages is treated as more important than one linked from a single forgotten post.
The words you use for the link matter too. The anchor text tells both readers and search engines what the destination page covers. “Our guide to party wall agreements” says far more than “here”.
Links fall into a few kinds. Navigation links (menu, footer) appear on every page and set out the main structure. Contextual links sit inside the body copy and connect related ideas, such as a blog post on damp linking to a damp-proofing service page. Breadcrumbs show where a page sits in the hierarchy. Contextual links tend to carry the most meaning, because they show a deliberate relationship between two pieces of content.
Why it matters
Internal links are the cheapest SEO lever most businesses have, because they need no outside help. A solicitor in Manchester might have an excellent conveyancing page that nothing else on the site mentions. Linking to it from the related blog posts, the property-law hub and the fee guide can make a real difference to how often it is crawled and how clearly Google understands its role.
They also guide the visit. Someone reading an article about VAT registration thresholds is a good prospect for an accountant’s VAT returns service, but only if the article shows them the way. Without links, readers either leave or have to hunt through the menu.
A sensible structure keeps important pages within a few clicks of the homepage. The more clicks a page needs (its click depth), the less often it tends to be crawled and the weaker it looks.
Common mistakes
- Orphan pages. Pages no other page links to can only be found through the sitemap or outside links, and a page your own site never mentions looks unimportant. An orphan page is one of the most common findings in an audit.
- Vague anchors. “Click here”, “read more” and “this page” waste the chance to describe the destination.
- The same exact anchor everywhere. Fifty links reading “best cheap boiler installation London” look engineered. Vary the wording naturally.
- Links through redirects. After a restructure, menus and body links often still point at old URLs. Update them to the final address.
- Linking everything to everything. A page with hundreds of links dilutes each one. Link where it genuinely helps the reader.
- Hiding links behind scripts. Links that only work through JavaScript click handlers, rather than a normal link with an address, may not be followed.
How to act on it
Crawl the site and list how many internal links point at each page. Your most valuable pages, usually services and key categories, should be near the top; if a minor blog post outranks them, the structure is working against you. Fix orphans first, then add contextual links from related articles to the pages they support, using anchors that describe the destination in plain words.
Make it a habit: every new post should link to at least one relevant service and one related article, and older posts should be updated to link to new pages. Planning these links page by page, alongside headings, titles and copy, is part of the on-page SEO work I do.