Internal links are the links between pages on your own site. Unlike backlinks, you decide every one of them: what links to what, and in what words. They are how search engines find pages, how importance gets distributed, and how a reader moves from a question to the page that sells the answer.
Briefly explained
- Links from one of your pages to another.
- You control every one, including the wording.
- They tell search engines which pages you consider important.
- If no page points at it, neither crawlers nor customers arrive.
What do they actually do?
They do three jobs at once, which is why they deserve deliberate attention.
- Discovery: Crawlers follow links. A page with none is reachable only through the sitemap, which is a weaker signal.
- Importance: Pages you link to often read as central. Pages linked once from a footer read as filler.
- Routing: A reader who arrived with a question gets taken to the page that solves it.
What goes wrong on most sites?
Nearly every site has one of these two patterns.
- Articles disconnected from services. Content attracts readers who then have nowhere obvious to go, so the traffic produces nothing.
- Forgotten pages. A location or service page gets built, linked once, and left. Technically live, effectively invisible.
Both are fixed with links rather than with more content.
How do you do it well?
- Link from each article to the service page that solves the problem it describes
- Link related service and location pages to each other where it is honest
- Use descriptive link text rather than “click here” or a bare address
- Check for orphan pages after every rebuild or migration
- Keep the links inside the body text, where readers actually follow them
What is the test?
Could a visitor reach every page that matters from the home page in two or three clicks, without using the menu as a crutch?
If the answer is no, the menu is carrying a structure the content should be carrying. See topic cluster for the organized version of the same idea.
What do the terms mean?
- Anchor text: The visible words carrying the link.
- Orphan page: A page with no internal links pointing at it.
- Crawl depth: How many clicks a page sits from the home page.
- XML sitemap: A list of your pages for search engines. A backstop, not a substitute for links.
- Hub page: A page that links out to a group of related pages.
Owner questions
