Do menu and footer links count as internal links?

How WordPress prints navigation links

Menus built under Appearance → Menus or with the Navigation block are output as ordinary HTML lists of <a href> elements, present in the page source on every page that shows the menu. The same is true of footer menus, the Page List, Categories and Latest Posts blocks, and classic widgets. Crawlers do not need to run JavaScript to see them.

That satisfies Google's basic requirement for a crawlable link: an <a> element with an href that resolves to a URL. Things that do not qualify are the usual suspects in custom themes: menu items that are <span> or <button> elements with a click handler, and links whose href is # or javascript:.

Mobile and "mega" menus that are hidden until tapped still count, as long as the links are in the HTML. Menus that are fetched only after a tap do not.

What sitewide links tell search engines

A page linked from the main menu is linked from every page of the site. That does three things:

• Discovery. The page is one click from everywhere, so it is found and recrawled quickly.
• Importance. Linking something from every page is a strong statement about what you consider central. Google's guidance on site structure is to link important pages prominently.
• Naming. The anchor text, short as it is, labels the destination. "Pricing" tells Google what the Pricing page is.

What they do poorly is describe. A menu holds perhaps seven words. It cannot say that one article explains grind size for espresso and another compares burr types. And because the same block appears on every page, search engines recognise it as template content, separate from the main content that is unique to each page.

That is the working distinction. Navigation links answer "what are the main parts of this site?" Links in the body answer "what is this other page about, and why does it matter here?" A contextual link sits in a sentence, with descriptive anchor text, on a page about a related subject.

Why a page in the menu can still be under-linked

"It's in the footer" is a common reply when a page is reported as having few internal links. Reachable is not the same as supported. If nothing on your site ever mentions a page in its text, you have told search engines where it is and nothing about why it deserves attention.

This is why Hydrogen SEO's internal link counter deliberately counts only links saved in post content. Menus, sidebars, widgets, footers, archive listings and related-post lists generated at page load are left out. A post it labels Orphaned may be reachable through a category archive, but no post or page of yours links to it in its text, and that is the kind of link you control when writing. Reachability from the homepage is a separate question, answered by a crawl, which the site audit covers.

So treat the two as different jobs:

Making navigation work harder

• Keep the main menu short. Five to eight items naming your real sections. Every extra link shares the attention with the others, for visitors and crawlers alike.
• Use descriptive labels. "Espresso guides" over "Resources". The label is the anchor text for a link from every page.
• Link to pages you want indexed. A menu full of links to noindexed or redirected addresses wastes the most prominent links you have. Point each at its final URL.
• Use the footer for utility and depth: contact, policies, top categories, an HTML sitemap. Avoid stuffing it with dozens of keyword-rich links, which reads as manipulative.
• Do not nofollow your own navigation. There is rarely a reason. If you need a rel value on a menu item, enable Link Relationship (XFN) under Screen Options on the Menus screen and enter it there.
• Then add contextual links. For each important page, find three or four related posts and link to it from the text. The orphan pages guide has a method.

After changing a menu, view the page source and search for one of the new addresses to confirm it is present as a plain link.