What is internal linking?
Internal links are links from one page on your site to another page on the same site. Navigation menus, breadcrumbs, related-post blocks, and links inside article text are all internal links. They are how visitors move through a site and how crawlers find and understand its pages.
Of all the signals you control completely, internal links are one of the most effective. They tell search engines which pages you consider important, what those pages are about through their anchor text, and how topics relate to each other.
How it works
Internal links do three jobs:
- Discovery. Crawlers follow links. A page with no internal links is an orphan page that may be found only through the sitemap, if at all.
- Importance. Link signals flow through internal links. Pages linked from the home page and from many other pages are treated as more important than pages buried several clicks deep.
- Context. The anchor text and surrounding words describe the target page. A link reading "pour-over ratio guide" tells Google more than "click here".
Contextual links inside body text tend to carry more meaning than repeated sitewide links in footers. A practical structure is a hub page on a broad topic linking to detailed pages, which link back to the hub and to each other where relevant.
Links must be real <a href> elements. Links that exist only as JavaScript click handlers may not be followed.
Example
A coffee site has a guide to pour-over brewing, a grinder buying guide, and a post on water temperature. In the pour-over guide:
<p>Grind size matters more than any other variable. Our
<a href="/grinder-buying-guide/">burr grinder buying guide</a> covers which grinders
hold a consistent medium-fine setting, and the
<a href="/water-temperature-for-coffee/">water temperature guide</a> explains why 93 to 96 °C works best.</p>
Each link is where a reader would naturally want more, and the anchor text describes the destination.
In WordPress
WordPress adds internal links through menus, category and tag archives, and theme related-posts features, but in-content links are up to you. The block editor's link tool searches your own posts as you type. Hydrogen SEO's on-page SEO score gives full points for three or more internal links and one external link, and its site audit reports orphan pages and broken internal links; see site audits and the internal linking strategy post.
Common mistakes
- Linking to URLs that redirect instead of the final address.
- Exact-match anchor text on every link to the same page.
- Important pages several clicks from the home page.
- Nofollowing internal links, which throws away your own signals.
Common questions
How many internal links should a page have?
There is no fixed number. Link wherever it helps the reader; a few relevant contextual links per article is a sensible baseline, more for long guides.
Do internal links help rankings?
Yes. They help pages get crawled, spread link signals across the site, and give search engines context through anchor text.