Internal Links SEO Best Practices (2024)

What are Internal Links?

Internal links are hyperlinks that point at (target) the same domain as the domain that the link exists on (source). In layman's terms, an internal link is one that points to another page on the same website.

Code Sample
<a href="http://www.same-domain.com/" title="Keyword Text">Keyword Text</a>
Optimal Format

Use descriptive keywords in anchor text that give a sense of the topic or keywords the source page is trying to target.

Why are Internal Links Important?

Internal links are useful for three main reasons:

  • They allow users to navigate a website.
  • They help establish information hierarchy for the given website.
  • They help spread link equity (ranking power) around websites.

What is an Internal Link? And how is it different to an External Link?

Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. They may beused in the main navigation menu or on the content of the page. Alternativelyexternal linkspoint to another domain, this includes links from a page on your site to another site, and links pointing from other sites to your site, also called backlinks.

SEO Best Practice

Internal links are most useful for establishing site architecture and spreading link equity (URLs are also essential). For this reason, this section is about building an SEO-friendly site architecture with internal links.

On an individual page, search engines need to see content in order to list pages in their massive keyword–based indices. They also need to have access to a crawlable link structure—a structure that lets spiders browse the pathways of a website—in order to find all of the pages on a website. Hundreds of thousands of sites make the critical mistake of hiding or burying their main link navigation in ways that search engines cannot access. This hinders their ability to get pages listed in the search engines' indices.

In the example below, Google's spider has reached page "A" without internal links it won't be able to locate the other pages.
Greatcontent, good keyword targeting, and smart marketing don't make any difference at all if the spiders can't reach those pages in the first place. The same problem will be faced by human visitors.

Internal Links SEO Best Practices (1)

Structural Internal Links & Site Architecture

The optimal structure for setting up yourwebsite's structure internal linkswould look similar to a pyramid (where the pageon the top is homepage):

Internal Links SEO Best Practices (2)

This structure has the minimum amount of links possible between the homepage and any given page.Crawl depth is a number indicates a pages distancefrom the home page. A higher crawl depthcould affect a pages crawlability. Important, revenue driving pages should have a lower drawl depth while maintaining a clear and organized site architecture.This is helpful because it allows link equity (ranking power) to flow throughout the entire site, thus increasing the ranking potential for each page. This structure is common on many high-performing websites in the form of category and subcategory systems.

You can use Moz Pro Site Crawl to identify crawl depth for pages on your site.

Structural Links & Contextual Links

No matter how well you planyour site architecture no website maintains a perfect cascading chandelier-like structure. Internal links can be bothstructural and contextual, and these two types of linkswork together toallow users to navigate a website andhelp spread link equity.

    Internal Links SEO Best Practices (3)


    Implementing Internal Links on Your Site

    Internally linking to a URL located at http://www.example.com/mammals... with the anchor text "cats" is a good example of a contextual internal link.Below is the format for a correctly formatted internal link. Imagine this link is on the domain jonwye.com.

    Internal Links SEO Best Practices (4)

    In the above illustration, the "a" tag indicates the start of a link. Link tags can contain images, text, or other objects, all of which provide a "clickable" area on the page that users can engage to move to another page. This is the original concept of the Internet: "hyperlinks." The link referral location tells the browser—and the search engines—where the link points. In this example, the URL http://www.jonwye.com is referenced. Next, the visible portion of the link for visitors, called "anchor text" in the SEO world, describes the page the link is pointing at. In this example, the page pointed to is about custom belts made by a man named Jon Wye, so the link uses the anchor text "Jon Wye's Custom Designed Belts." The </a> tag closes the link, so that elements later on in the page will not have the link attribute applied to them.

    This is the most basic format of a link—and it is eminently understandable to the search engines. The search engine spiders know that they should add this link to the engine's link graph of the web, use it to calculate query-independent variables, and follow it to index the contents of the referenced page.

    Below are some common reasons why pages might not be reachable, and thus, may not be indexed.

    Links in Submission-Required Forms

    Forms can include elements as basic as a drop–down menu or elements as complex as a full–blown survey. In either case, search spiders will not attempt to "submit" forms and thus, any content or links that would be accessible via a form are invisible to the engines.

    Links Only Accessible Through Internal Search Boxes

    Spiders will not attempt to perform searches to find content, and thus, it's estimated that millions of pages are hidden behind completely inaccessible internal search box walls.

    Links in Un-Parseable Javascript

    Links built using Javascript may either be uncrawlable or devalued in weight depending on their implementation. For this reason, it is recommended that standard HTML links should be used instead of Javascript based links on any page where search engine referred traffic is important.

    Links in Flash, Java, or Other Plug-Ins

    Any links embedded inside Flash, Java applets, and other plug-ins are usually inaccessible to search engines.

    Links Pointing to Pages Blocked by the Meta Robots Tag or Robots.txt

    The Meta Robots tag and the robots.txt file both allow a site owner to restrict spider access to a page.

    Links on pages with Hundreds or Thousands of Links

    The search engines all have a rough crawl limit of 150 links per page before they may stop spidering additional pages linked to from the original page. This limit is somewhat flexible, and particularly important pages may have upwards of 200 or even 250 links followed, but in general practice, it's wise to limit the number of links on any given page to 150 or risk losing the ability to have additional pages crawled.

    Links in Frames or I-Frames

    Technically, links in both frames and I-Frames are crawlable, but both present structural issues for the engines in terms of organization and following. Only advanced users with a good technical understanding of how search engines index and follow links in frames should use these elements in combination with internal linking.

    By avoiding these pitfalls, a webmaster can have clean, spiderable HTML links that will allow the spiders easy access to their content pages. Links can have additional attributes applied to them, but the engines ignore nearly all of these, with the important exception of the rel="nofollow" tag.

    Want to get a quick glimpse into your site's indexation? Use a tool like Moz Pro, Link Explorer, or Screaming Frog to run a site crawl. Then, compare the number of pages the crawl turned up to the number of pages listed when you run a site:search on Google.

    Rel="nofollow" can be used with the following syntax:

    <pre><a href="/" rel="nofollow">nofollow this link</a></pre>

    In this example, by adding the rel="nofollow" attribute to the link tag, the webmaster is telling the search engines that they do not want this link to be interpreted as a normal, juice passing, "editorial vote." Nofollow came about as a method to help stop automated blog comment, guestbook, and link injection spam, but has morphed over time into a way of telling the engines to discount any link value that would ordinarily be passed. Links tagged with nofollow are interpreted slightly differently by each of the engines.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is internal linking vs external linking?

    Very simply, internal linking occurs when a site links to other URLs on the same site, whereas external linking occurs when a site links to URLs on a different site. Put another way, internal links are when you link to your own pages, while external links point to pages on other domains.

    Why are internal links important?

    Internal links are important because they can help Google understand and rank your website better. By giving Google links to follow along with descriptive anchor text, you can indicate to Google which pages of your site are important, as well as what they are about. Internal links are also good for user experience and may improve engagement.

    How many internal links are too many?

    While there is no definite answer as to how many internal links on a page are too many, Google has indicated they can crawl 100s of links per page. Practically speaking, lots of links isn't always good for user experience, and limiting the number of links per page to a reasonable number (typically around 100 or less) can provide additional SEO benefits.

    How do you find internal linking opportunities?

    One of the best ways to find internal linking opportunities is to find pages on your site that rank for related topics and make sure they link with descriptive anchor text.

    Keep learning

    • The Beginner's Guide to Link Building - Everything you need to get started on one of the most important things you can do for your SEO.
    • - Paddy Moogan shares his vast wealth of knowledge on advanced link building and link earning tactics used by professional SEOs.
    • External Links
    • Anchor Text
    • Link Equity
    • Webmaster Guidelines-Google's Official Guidelines for Webmasters.
    • Text Links and PageRank-FormerHead of the Webspam Team at Google, Matt Cutts', thoughts on hyperlinks in relation to SEO and Google.

    Put your skills to work

    Gauge a Site's Influence with Link Explorer

    Link Explorer is a link popularity and backlink analysis tool that lets you research and compare any site on the web.

    Internal Links SEO Best Practices (2024)

    FAQs

    How to optimize internal links for SEO? ›

    Specifically, here's how internal links help with your SEO efforts:
    1. Help search engines ‌crawl and index your site. ...
    2. Improve your site's navigation. ...
    3. Pass on link authority. ...
    4. Boost your SERP ranking. ...
    5. Link to relevant content. ...
    6. Use links that add value. ...
    7. Use descriptive anchor text. ...
    8. Use a variety of different anchor texts.
    Aug 24, 2023

    How many internal links are good for SEO? ›

    Practically speaking, lots of links isn't always good for user experience, and limiting the number of links per page to a reasonable number (typically around 100 or less) can provide additional SEO benefits.

    Can too many internal links hurt SEO? ›

    Putting more than a hundred links doesn't immediately impact your site negatively if your page authority is relatively high. But if you're just starting a small business, doing so might do more harm than good. Just to be sure, just follow the guidelines that most SEO strategies suggest. No more than 150 links per page.

    Do internal links boost SEO? ›

    Internal links help Google find, index and understand all of the pages on your site. If you use them strategically, internal links can send page authority (also known as PageRank) to important pages. In short: internal linking is key for any site that wants higher rankings in Google.

    Are internal links good for SEO? ›

    Internal links are a crucial part of SEO for three main reasons: They help search engines understand your site's structure. They pass authority. They help users navigate your site.

    What is the ideal number of internal links? ›

    A good rule of thumb is to limit the number of internal links to around five or six per page. This should be enough to give your readers a few options without overwhelming them. When it comes to image links, you can include more than five or six since they don't take up as much space as text-based links.

    Why are broken internal links bad for SEO? ›

    Impact on SEO

    Broken links can impact the ability of search engines to index a site properly. Pages that are not correctly linked or are unreachable might not get indexed at all, leading to lost opportunities in search visibility.

    How many internal links per 1,000 words? ›

    If you're wondering how many internal links are ideal for a single blog post, there's no specific number. However, hyperlinking 1-5 internal links for a 1000-word post or 5-10 links for a 2000-word post is recommended for SEO.

    What are the disadvantages of internal linking? ›

    Internal linking can cause broken links, which can hurt the user experience and your website ranking. It is because search engines will consider the broken link when determining the quality and relevance of your website content.

    Are long pages bad for SEO? ›

    Large page sizes can affect SEO and performance and cause search engines to rank your website lower. As such, now is the time to start understanding page size because, in the digital world, it matters.

    Do inbound links make a big difference to SEO? ›

    Inbound links, also known as backlinks, occur when another website links back to your site. Google views inbound links as an indicator that your site has high-quality content, making these links one of the most important elements in search engine optimization (SEO).

    What is the difference between backlinks and internal links? ›

    An internal link is a page from one of your pages to another one of your pages. An external link is a link from one of your pages to somebody else's page. This could be their website or another resource online. A backlink is a link from somebody else's page coming into your page.

    What is internal linking and how it helps your SEO? ›

    What are internal links? An internal link is any link from one page on your website to another page on your website. Your users and search engines use links to find content on your website. Your users use links to navigate through your site and to find the content they want to find.

    What are the two types of internal links? ›

    There are two types of internal links: navigational and contextual. Navigational links include links in your header, footer, and navigation bars to help users find other pages within the same domain as search engines crawl your website.

    What kind of link building strategy is best for SEO? ›

    • Build links from relevant websites. ...
    • Create infographics and other visual assets. ...
    • Create share-worthy content. ...
    • Use influencer marketing. ...
    • Leverage guest blogging. ...
    • Host competitions and giveaways. ...
    • Don't forget about local SEO. ...
    • Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

    What are the four main steps when it comes to internal SEO? ›

    There are 4 stages of SEO: keyword research, readability check, linking, and marketing. While each is important on its own, you'll see the best results by ensuring the stages are supporting one another.

    How do I optimize my links? ›

    How to Optimize Your URLs for Search [Quick Tip]
    1. URL Slug Example. ...
    2. Keep it as simple as possible. ...
    3. Take out the extra words in the page part of the URL slug. ...
    4. Include relevant keywords. ...
    5. Don't keyword stuff. ...
    6. Make it reader-friendly. ...
    7. Separate words with hyphens. ...
    8. Don't use slugs that already belong to other pages.
    Jul 23, 2020

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