Internal Linking
Internal linking means linking pages within the same website. It helps users navigate and tells search engines which pages matter and how they relate.
What is internal linking?
Internal links are links from one page to another on the same website – in navigation menus, footers, breadcrumbs and, most valuably, within the content itself. They help users find related information and help search engines discover pages, understand their topic and judge their importance.
Why internal linking matters for SEO:
- Discovery and crawling: pages without internal links (“orphan pages”) are hard for search engines to find and often aren’t indexed.
- Importance: pages that receive many internal links from strong pages tend to be seen as more important.
- Context: descriptive anchor texts tell search engines and AI systems what the linked page is about. “Read our guide to hreflang tags” is more useful than “click here”.
Good practice:
- Link from high-traffic pages to the pages you want to rank, such as service pages.
- Group content into topic clusters: an overview page linking to detailed pages, and back.
- Keep important pages within a few clicks of the homepage.
- Fix broken internal links and avoid long redirect chains.
On international websites, internal links should normally stay within one language version, so that each market version forms a coherent whole. The language switcher links versions to each other, while hreflang tags tell search engines which version belongs to which market. A SEO audit should check internal linking separately for every language.