An SEO Guide to Proper Internal Linking
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An SEO Guide to Proper Internal Linking

  • Internal links are hyperlinks used to connect different pages on the same website.

  • From the perspective of users, internal links help with site navigation and provide users with a deeper understanding of a specific topic or concept.

  • From an SEO perspective, internal links help search engines find and crawl the pages of a website, comprehending its structure, as well as pass authority/link juice.

  • There are two main types of internal links: contextual links, which provide extra information on the topic, and navigational links, which help visitors move around the site.

  • To establish an effective internal linking strategy, you should follow a set of steps: find existing internal links on your website, seek out internal linking opportunities, make a list of pages to link to, choose appropriate anchor text, implement the internal links, and, create new linking opportunities.

  • Common internal linking issues include broken or redirected internal links, orphan pages, and excessive number of internal links to unimportant pages.

  • To identify and address internal linking issues, advanced tools like SE Ranking’s site audit tool can be helpful in providing insights and guidance.

Content and links are the two cornerstones of SEO. The royal status of content is not even a matter of debate. Backlinks are also given a lot of value. At the same time, internal linking opportunities are often ignored, and there’s a reason behind this. To set up proper internal linking, you need to invest a lot of time and effort while the resulting benefits are not that evident.

So, why link together a website’s pages? Let’s use a metaphor to illustrate why doing this is important. Remember Venice, the city of canals and bridges? Now imagine it has no bridges at all. Moving around a place like that would be very difficult. Similarly, visitors struggle to navigate websites with no internal links. And so do search engine crawlers. If you want faster indexing and positive user behavior signals, start building bridges. 

You can also use internal links to make your most important pages stand out. Although both internal links and backlinks increase the value of pages, internal links don’t have as tangible an effect. The search giant tries to serve its users with the best possible content, and Google naturally assumes that the content you actively promote across your site is your best content. 

Using internal links for SEO in a smart way can even boost your rankings. The keyword here is ‘smart’, so let’s figure out how to get the most out of your internal links step by step. 

What are internal links?

An internal link is a hyperlink that connects one page to another page on the same site. These links are especially important for both users and search engines, as they greatly impact website navigation and information architecture. When a user clicks on an internal link, they can easily jump between different sections of your website, such as pages or articles. From the perspective of search engines, internal links play a crucial role in discovering and indexing various pages on your website.

Internal links vs external links

External links are clickable links that direct readers to other websites, as opposed to internal links, which connect pages on the same website. External links are typically used to provide references, citations, or additional resources from outside of the website. Internal links, on the other hand, help users navigate the website’s content.

What is internal linking?

Internal linking is the process of connecting pages on the same website through hyperlinks. This involves identifying the topical relevance of the pages you’re connecting, choosing descriptive anchor texts, and strategically placing these links where they’re most useful and likely to be clicked. Follow internal linking best practices to improve your site’s navigation, user experience, and search engine optimization.

Why are internal links important for SEO?

Providing convenient and relevant links makes it possible for website owners to prolong user engagement and boost conversion rates. But which role does internal linking play for both users and search engines? Let’s explore the importance of internal linking from both perspectives.

Why internal links are important to users

Internal linking can benefit users in several ways, but the most significant ones are as follows:

  • They help users navigate your site: Internal links create a web of interconnected pages, allowing users to move seamlessly from one page to another without relying solely on the main navigation menu.
  • They help promote important pages: Strategically placing links to these pages on other pages within your site can direct users to important pages, such as landing pages or promo content.
  • They help users gain a deeper understanding of a particular topic or concept: Internal links are a great tool for defining unfamiliar terms, providing background information, and referencing supporting evidence or sources within the website. This enriches the credibility and comprehensibility of the content, leading to increased engagement and trust among users.

What’s more, integrating a well-thought-out internal linking strategy during a website redesign can effectively showcase newly added features and sections, encouraging user engagement and exploration. 

Why internal links are important to Google

Now that we know which role internal linking plays for users, let’s identify the main reasons why internal links are important for search engines like Google:

  • They help search engines find all pages of a website and understand its structure: Internal links assist search engine crawlers in discovering and indexing various pages on your website. By providing pathways, they enable search engines to understand the hierarchy and context of your content, even if it’s organized into paginated sections. This boosts your website’s visibility in SERPs.
  • They pass authority/link juice: When one page on your website links to another, it passes a portion of its authority or ranking power to the linked page. This helps search engines assess the importance and relevance of different pages on your site.

In the past, when a link was absolutely necessary to use, but webmasters didn’t want it to get link juice, they would use the nofollow attribute. Google wouldn’t take that link into account and all the other links placed on the same page would get more authority passed to them. 

This is no longer the case. To prevent manipulations of the sort, Google decided to adhere to the nofollow directive, but link juice the link was supposed to get now get distributed among other pages. It simply gets diluted.

Link juice distribution when nofollow tag is usedLink juice distribution when nofollow tag is used

It doesn’t make sense to nofollow your internal links. If you need to make Google ignore links, you can use JS to create links that search bots can’t spot. Google bots can’t click links like users. Googlebots understand there’s a link to follow by spotting the tag. If the tag is not there, and instead Googlebot sees something like or , it won’t notice the link.

A few words about PageRank and link juice

If you are an SEO newbie, you might have never heard of PageRank. In short, PageRank is a metric that scores each page’s authority level on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 10. Within the PageRank framework, it is believed that whenever a page links to another page, it shares its positive properties and increases the other page’s PageRank. 

PageRank formula is available to the general public, so some experts use it to manually calculate how link juice is distributed across their websites.

PageRank formulaPageRank formula

The first formula in the picture above is a simplified one—it only looks at the page’s number of inbound and outbound links. 

The second formula adds the damping factor (d) to the equation. It measures the probability of a click—a chance that a hypothetical internet surfer will choose to click a particular link over all the links available on the page. The damping factor can be set between 0 and 1. 

The second equation is harder to apply, but more accurate.To learn more about how PageRank is calculated, check out this guide.

Types of internal links

There are two main categories of internal links: navigational and contextual. Every internal link on your site fits into one of these two types.

Navigational links

Navigational links can be found in your main menu (both top and side navigation), header, footer, sidebars, breadcrumbs, buttons, and pagination controls. Their purpose is to streamline how visitors access your website’s key sections and pages.

Navigational internal links are often sitewide or appear across multiple pages. To highlight an important page on your website, create multiple pathways by placing links in various navigational areas where users would naturally look for this content.

Here’s where you will find navigational links most often: 

  • Top menu: Covers categories, services, and other main topics:
Top menu linksTop menu links
  • Sidebars: Provides quick links to encourage users to visit related content or important-to-know blog or product pages:
Sidebar linksSidebar links

You might also encounter navigational links in category pages. These pages serve as content hubs and display collections of related posts with rich preview elements. These posts might include a topic label, featured image, brief excerpt, and essential metadata like date and author information. Category pages can be organized into elements like most popular posts, related subcategories, and featured content.

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Navigational links in category pagesNavigational links in category pages
  • Footer: Provides access to other key pages like “Company,” “Contact us,” or “Terms of Use”, etc. and appears at the bottom on all pages:
Footer linksFooter links

Contextual links

Contextual internal links are clickable pieces of text. These links use descriptive anchor texts or keywords to indicate where they will take the reader when clicked. Contextual internal links provide website visitors and search engines with extra information on the topic by linking to relevant pages.

Incorporating contextual links into the body of your page content provides helpful context to your visitors and makes it easier for them to explore related topics in-depth. This gives visitors a better understanding of the subject. This is why you can often find them across blog posts. Like here:

Contextual linksContextual links

Additionally, search engines recognize the relevance and depth provided by contextual links, which can contribute to higher rankings and increased visibility in search results. Leveraging contextual links enables website owners to create a more informative and engaging experience for their audience.

Create an internal linking strategy

Constructing an effective internal linking strategy requires you to carefully analyze your most important pages, your site structure, and existing internal link building efforts. Let’s go through some key steps into establishing an internal linking strategy that aligns with your business needs.

Find internal links on your website

Start by identifying the internal links on your website. Take advantage of advanced tools like SE Ranking’s site audit tool to thoroughly explore your site’s structure and extract comprehensive information about the internal links present. This analysis provides valuable insights into the interconnections of different pages and reveals patterns in your internal link building approach.

When performing an internal link analysis with SE Ranking’s Website Audit, you can detect most internal linking issues in the Internal Links section, as demonstrated in the screenshot below.

Internal Links section in Website AuditInternal Links section in Website Audit

For example, the internal linking tool provides a list of all pages with no inbound links. These are also called orphan pages. The problem with pages like these is that both search engines and users have a hard time finding them. Orphan pages can still be indexed if they are indicated in the sitemap file or if they have external sources referring to them. But it’s important to make it easier for search robots to access all the site’s pages you want them to index.

Users can find pages with no inbound links in the search results whenever those pages are well-optimized. But users can’t access the website’s orphan pages from other pages. If you want your content to be reachable, add internal links. Lack of linking leads to lower overall user engagement.

Although having single links pointing to individual pages is not necessarily bad, websites with only a dozen or so pages will lack internal link opportunities. Linking to every page multiple times in a natural way will be difficult. If your website is not that small, and Website Audit detected poorly linked pages on it, carefully study the list. If a page is important and you want to increase its value on your site, build more internal links to it. If not, leave things as they are.

To find broken internal links, go to the Found links section in the Website Audit. Use filters to detect all 400 and 404 internal links and links leading users to redirected pages. Besides the status code, the table features all other key link metrics such as link type (hyperlink, canonical, hreflang, meta refresh, CSS, JS, or image link), the anchor text and dofollow/nofollow attribute.

Found links SE Ranking auditFound links SE Ranking audit

Broken internal links should be fixed immediately because they hurt user experience and send link juice down the drain. Internal links to 301 and 302 pages are also useless because they send users to pages other than the ones initially intended.

Finally, to analyze your website’s link juice distribution, go to the Crawled Pages section and use the Columns button to display the necessary columns—Inlinks, Internal outlinks, and External outlinks.

Analysing website links with SE RankingAnalysing website links with SE Ranking

To get even more details, click on any of the numbers. For example, by clicking on the number of inlinks, you can analyze anchor texts pointing to individual pages.

Inlinks anchor texts analysisInlinks anchor texts analysis

As you can see, performing an internal link audit is possible with the right tool at hand.

Find internal linking opportunities

Once you have a thorough understanding of your website’s internal link structure, it’s time to identify new internal link opportunities. 

Start by assessing whether your focus pages are getting the most internal links. Look for relevant and contextually appropriate pages on your website that can be linked to these high-value pages. 

Identify the pages on your site that receive the most organic traffic. These high-traffic pages are excellent sources for internal links. Add contextual links from these popular pages to your focus pages or other relevant content to effectively distribute that traffic.

Look for pages on your site that don’t have any contextual links to other pages. These might be “dead ends” for users. Add relevant internal links from these pages to keep visitors engaged and improve your overall site structure.

Meanwhile, some pages will receive the majority of their inlinks from external sources. This is considered good for organic traffic growth. If these pages are not aligned with your primary business or SEO purpose, use them to pass the link juice to your target pages. Leveraging internal links from less critical pages to your key target pages can boost their visibility and authority. 

You can view a complete list of backlinks and referring domains with all their key metrics with SE Ranking’s Backlink Counter. As a result, you can prioritize all your website pages from the most budding to the least important ones. The pages on the top of your list should get the lion’s share of your internal links and the ones at the bottom should have at least a few links pointing to them. 

It’s also important to consider any content gaps or topics closely related to each other. Identify these kinds of connections to create internal links between relevant pages and guide users as they explore related content. This keeps them engaged.

Make a list of pages to link to

Create a list of pages you plan to link to based on what you find after following the previous steps. Consider the following factors when making your selection:

  • Commercial potential—Single out pages that can bring more revenue to the business in comparison to other pages. For example, these pages might convert better than others or offer products with a hefty price tag.
  • The amount of traffic a page can potentially bring. It is calculated by dividing the total search volume of all the keywords the page targets by the average CTR of the expected positions. Mind that CTR varies tremendously in the top 20 and special features in the SERP only add fuel to the fire. For this purpose, you can use a rough estimate. For example, if you expect to have all your target keywords in the top 5, you can use a 10% CTR value for your calculations.
  • Seasonality. Some pages with high commercial or traffic potential may have seasonal character (e.g. pages offering Christmas decorations or swimwear, or a blog post about the best winter escape destinations). You can still prioritize these pages, but you’ll have to tweak your internal linking as the interest in the topics fades out after the season ends. 
  • Business goals. A business may be interested in promoting certain pages regardless of their commercial or traffic potential, (e.g. an Our team page can be actively promoted because one of the business goals would be to develop a strong HR brand).
  • Competition. Some pages may seem like lucrative pieces but turn out to be too hard to rank for. If a page targets keywords with a high difficulty score and competes with pages that boast particularly strong backlinks profiles, it may not be your best bet. If the competition is too tough for you to get a leg up against, consider focusing on less competitive pages that can provide quicker wins. This doesn’t mean you should automatically dismiss high-competition pages. They may still be worth it if they align with your core business goals. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, and context matters. Evaluate each case according to your unique situation and long-term goals.

During this process, focus primarily on pillar pages. Pillar pages are high-level, comprehensive components of content that cover broad topics related to your industry or niche. They serve as the main hubs from which you can link to subtopics. Pillar pages often target highly competitive keywords and drive substantial organic traffic to your website.

Once you have identified your pillar pages and other important pages, it’s time to implement a silo structure. This is when you cover different aspects of a single topic in a series of articles and connect them all into a cluster with internal links. Clusters like these are called silos. They typically include cornerstone content that covers a topic in detail, along with smaller content pieces that provide additional information on the subject. 

Ideally, your website structure should be carefully planned in a way that allows you to easily scale and add more pages to the website. In any case, it’s never too late to reconsider your current structure so that it meets your SEO needs. Having a proper silo structure means accomplishing many tasks at once, including:

  • Mindfully distributing your target keywords across website pages.
  • Connecting closely-related content with internal links and encouraging users to keep browsing your site.
  • Pointing the highest number of links to your cornerstone pieces to ensure Google starts taking these pages seriously.

Use anchor text wisely

As you’ve probably already guessed, there are many ways to use internal link anchor texts. You can incorporate ‘talkative’ links, as in ‘keyword research guide’ or ‘how to find your backlinks,’ or not so ‘talkative’ links, as in links that invite you to study ‘this guide’ or to ‘click here’. Fitting keywords into every anchor text makes it super clear to Google which search query your page targets. Google even expects to get some additional context from your anchor texts. 

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That being said, why not just forget about ‘click here to read more’ and use keywords in anchor texts instead? We asked the SEO community to share their thoughts on the matter. Kennedy Ingbre offered a compelling point of view:

Kennedy Ingbre

SEO Manager at Varner

I don’t think Google penalizes sites for having exact match anchor texts on every internal link, but I also don’t think it helps your SEO efforts. Having the same anchor text with the same exact keyword only robs you of opportunities to give Google more diverse signals about the context and relevance of your pages. That’s why I always recommend including partial-match or mixing anchor texts up with secondary keywords.

Having a diversified internal linking profile is ideal, but another question remains. How do you make sure the internal links pointing to your cornerstone content use various anchor text types? One option would be to put your links wherever they naturally fit within the text without obsessing about which anchor text you use. 

On the other hand, planning ahead for every internal link gives you an even better chance to use different anchors containing both keywords and generic phrases. Stick to creating a carefully calculated roadmap. 

It’s up to you to choose between the two approaches. Having a spreadsheet with all your internal links planned for months ahead is fine. Having no spreadsheet and acting based on the situation is also ok. You can even do a little bit of both and measure the results after. There is always the option to audit your anchor texts to make sure you’re on the right track.

Internal link implementation best practices

The next step you’ll need to take involves using both navigational and contextual internal links on your site. Here are some internal linking best practices to follow:

1. Keep your header and footer clean and clear

The header menu is the most important website navigation element. This is where users normally go to find the pages they need.

Header menuHeader menu

SEO-wise, remember that header links are sitewide and get a lot of link juice. Since your most important pages should get the highest possible link juice, add them to your header. 

At the same time, ، out certain utility and legal pages from your header if they are not so popular among users. This maximizes the effectiveness of other links. Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, About us and Contact pages are mandatory, but it’s totally fine to limit them to your footer. 

In addition to the utility pages mentioned above, a footer menu may feature a Careers page, an FAQ section, and a Help Сenter, making it easy to get in touch with your support team. A common practice is to also add links to your social media profiles into the footer.

Footer menuFooter menu

Naturally, you can also link to your cornerstone pages from the footer. Even though footer links are less visible than header ones, they are also sitewide. This means your priority pages will get tons of extra link juice.

2. Don’t overthink your sidebar

Most websites tend to use their sidebars to communicate additional ideas to website users. 

The sidebar is a good place to include handy website widgets that let users chat with your support team, book appointments or sign up for newsletters. 

From an internal linking standpoint, it is wise to use your sidebar as a shortcut to your website’s most important pages. Include your most read blog posts and popular product pages.

sidebar with links to blog postssidebar with links to blog posts

In addition to links to your most important pages, a common practice is to use the sidebar to link out to the new content pieces or blog posts/products from the same category. These links will be useful to website visitors. This is what you should strive for with any kind of navigational link.

3. Consider using breadcrumbs

A breadcrumb trail is a must for large websites with complicated architecture and numerous categories.

Breadcrumbs sampleBreadcrumbs sample

Breadcrumbs help users navigate one or several steps back within the website structure. In the example above, users only have to click once to see hardside luggage options available in the shop or return to the Luggage category page, which features all kinds of luggage options. Breadcrumbs are also beneficial for internal linking since they let you connect child pages to parent pages. 

4. Encourage users to click links with buttons

Buttons are meant to get user’s attention and normally lead users to ‘money’ pages, including product carts, sign-up pages, affiliate landing pages, etc.

Buttons samplesButtons samples

Buttons are sometimes indispensable. Ecommerce websites almost always have buttons for adding products to carts. Landing pages also tend to have several buttons that allow users to buy or try products. 

On informational pages, buttons can work as a powerful tool for attracting user attention. Users don’t expect to see a lot of buttons in the body texts, so they serve as a prominent click magnet on the page. 

You can use buttons in your blog posts to direct users to important pages. These buttons have a higher chance of getting noticed than links in the sidebar.

Google treats button links like any other, provided that they are regular links placed in the tag. If you don’t want Google to consider your button links, there are a number of ways to build links without search engines spotting them:

  • You can use JavaScript to add an onclick event to your link instead of the href attribute—when users click these links it triggers JS to open a new page.
  • You can pair JavaScript with base64 encoding to replace link URLs with strings of letters and numbers (e.g. https://seranking.com/blog/ will look as follows upon encoding — aHR0cHM6Ly9zZXJhbmtpbmcuY29tL2Jsb2cv.) A special JS function will then decode the link for website users.
  • Another option is to direct users to a page that redirects them to the destination page.

5. Don’t forget about pagination

Pagination is a form of internal linking. It uses archives, portals, and large product catalogs to promote easy navigation. It’s crucial for organizing and structuring content, especially on sites with extensive data sets. Implementing pagination correctly helps Google discover and index older content efficiently (such as multiple month-old blog posts or products in large e-commerce catalogs) and helps spread link equity across your site.

Ensure your paginated pages can be crawled and indexed, and follow search engine guidelines when optimizing them. Here are some key points to remember:

  • Link pages in order using tags to help Google find pages and understand the relationships between them.
  • Link all pages to the first page of the collection.
  • Use the same titles and descriptions for all pages in a sequence – Google is smart enough to recognize pages in a sequence and index them accordingly.
  • Use unique URLs for each page (e.g., ?page=2, ?page=3) as Google treats them separately in a paginated sequence.
  • Don’t use fragment identifiers (the text after a # in a URL) for page numbers. Google ignores these.
  • Canonicalize each paginated URL.
  • Be careful with filters and sort orders to avoid duplicate content issues. If you use them, employ the noindex robots meta tag to block these URLs from being indexed.

6. Use contextual links with readers in mind

Now, let’s talk about contextual links. These are a major asset to your internal linking strategy because they provide additional information and guidance, helping users better understand your content.

Contextual link sampleContextual link sample

In the example above, we linked to our post on canonical tags from another article on hreflang attributes. Users who are not familiar with the concept of canonical tags can get essential information by following the link. This gives users more contextual awareness around the tips we share in the article on proper hreflang usage. The link is relevant and beneficial for users, which is exactly what Google expects from contextual links.

Google assesses internal link relevance at several levels (i.e. sentence, paragraph, and the entire content piece). Fitting a paragraph on race cars, for example, into a text on makeup trends would be totally wrong. Google won’t buy it, so our advice is to avoid using shady techniques like these and respect your readers.

7. Add internal links to new pages

Always add internal links to newly created pages on your website. This improves both SEO and user engagement. It keeps people on your site longer and ensures Google can find and index your most recent pages faster. 

It can take time for new pages to generate backlink profiles, but you can give them a head start by adding internal links once they’re created. Linking from established pages to new ones passes authority to the new pages and distributes it across your entire site. 

To do this correctly, look for opportunities to link relevant existing content to your new pages. Use Google search operators (like “site:seranking.com internal links”) to find relevant pages to link. A simpler approach is to discover related content through your website’s search function or blog archive.

After identifying potential matches using these methods, start connecting the dots. Add at least two or three links from established pages to your new content. Over time, this will improve your site’s visibility and enhance its user experience. 

8. Create topic clusters

Creating topic clusters involves structuring your content around key themes or topics on your website, with these key topics serving as topic pillars. As mentioned earlier, pillar pages act as the main branches of your content tree, targeting competitive keywords and driving significant traffic. Now, let’s focus on building topic clusters around these pillars. 

Think of clusters as smaller branches extending from your pillar content. These clusters consist of specific, in-depth pages that explore various aspects of your pillar topic. Organizing content this way not only enhances your site architecture but also helps establish topical authority. 

  How to Reach Your Audience

When planning your clusters, start broad and then narrow down. For example, if your pillar page focuses on content marketing, your clusters could include topics like content creation tips, content distribution strategies, and measuring content success. Each cluster page dives deeper into a specific aspect of content marketing while maintaining a strong connection to the pillar page. As your content grows, you can even create “subclusters” within existing clusters, delving into more niche topics while preserving your site’s cohesive structure. 

The next step is to link your cluster pages to the pillar content and to one another. This strengthens your internal linking strategy and highlights the topical relevance of your content. This structure helps search engines understand the relationships between your pages, boosting your site’s authority on the topic. It also improves user experience by helping visitors find information they need quickly and encouraging them to explore more of your site.

9. Make every page easy to find

A solid website structure, paired with effective internal linking, makes it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. This approach creates clear connections between your pages, makes navigation easier, and helps search engines discover and index all your website content better.

This is even more important for larger websites with many pages. The deeper a page is in the hierarchy, the longer it will take for users and crawlers to reach it. Linking directly to these pages, ideally within just a few clicks from your homepage, creates the shortest path possible.  

Google also assigns each website a specific crawl budget, which can be a concern for large sites with numerous pages. If the crawl budget is exceeded, some pages may not be indexed. Maximize crawl efficiency and guide Google to your key pages by using internal links paired with sitemaps.

10. Monitor your internal links

Keeping an eye on your internal links is crucial for keeping your website healthy. Over time, as you add new content, update pages, or change URLs, some links may break or become outdated. Monitoring these links helps you spot and fix issues quickly while ensuring your link equity is distributed well across your site. This means you must do regular internal link audit checks.

Use our Website Audit tool to monitor internal links and see if there are any critical issues associated with them. Our Website Audit tool provides a comprehensive overview of your internal linking structure and offers other site-wide technical SEO issues.

To find internal links, open the Issue Report and click on Internal links. The tool will show you any link issues found and provide tips on how to fix them.

the Issue Report section of Website Audit toolthe Issue Report section of Website Audit tool

It will present a comprehensive breakdown of internal linking issues, including pages without internal links pointing to them, internal links with missing anchor texts, internal links with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, and pages with only one internal link pointing to them.

Here is what you will discover in each issue category:

  • How many pages have the issue, and how this has changed since your last audit
  • The pages you’ve fixed since last time
  • Any new pages where the issue was found

You can click on any of these numbers to see the pages affected. Once you’ve addressed each issue, reset the audit results to double-check if they’re fixed.

Create new internal linking opportunities

After you have linked all the relevant pages (and hopefully added some links to them from the pages with the highest authority), you may still need more internal links to make your most potent pages stand out. 

Here are two potential routes you can take if you don’t have enough relevant pages on your website:

  • Add more navigational blocks with internal links to your website and use them to highlight your cornerstone content.
  • Create new relevant content.

Naturally, the second option takes ample time and effort, but the resources you’ll spend are well worth it. You’ll  get proper pages for internal linking purposes while covering more relevant topics on your site to cater to more user intents. This will help you drive more traffic to your website. This goes to show that succeeding in SEO means producing tons of content. 

To get the most out of your newly created pages, use them for outbound links while also adding links to them from older posts. This gives them higher internal authority and helps them pass on more link juice.

Common internal linking problems & how to fix them

Internal linking can be especially tricky if you’re dealing with a larger website. Let’s look at some of the most common issues you may face when developing and implementing your internal linking strategy.

Uncrawlable internal links

To make it easier for Google to discover and index your pages, make your links crawlable. Google primarily crawls links that use the HTML format. This means that your internal links must follow this structure to be effective for SEO.

Even if you use JavaScript to dynamically insert links into a page, Google can still crawl them. This holds true as long as they use the HTML markup shown above.

Be cautious with other link formats. Google may either have difficulty parsing them or not parselinks with different structures at all. See the examples below:

Broken internal links

Broken links occur when a page that was previously linked to is deleted, relocated, or renamed. The broken link’s page will display a 404 status code. Regularly check for broken internal links with website crawling tools and promptly fix them to ensure a seamless user experience.

Orphan pages

Orphan pages are those with no links pointing to them. Ensure every page has at least one internal link  to help search engines find and index it.

Lots of internal links to unimportant pages

While internal links are beneficial, excessive internal links to unimportant or low-value pages can dilute the link authority passed from other pages. Focus on linking to pages that are valuable, relevant, and align with your SEO goals.

To evaluate your internal linking strategy effectively, use the Crawled Pages report in SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool to analyze your internal link distribution. Sort your pages by how many internal links they receive to identify whether your priority pages (like key service pages, important blog posts, or main product categories) are getting sufficient internal links compared to less important pages.

Crawled Pages report in SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool Crawled Pages report in SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool

If you notice that less important pages have significantly more internal links than your key pages, it’s time to adjust your linking strategy.

Simply put, there is no universal rule for the “right” number of internal links. It all depends on the specific content of each page, your website’s size, structure, and the goals it serves. What matters is prioritizing your most valuable content and ensuring a good user experience.

Internal links to redirected pages

If a page is redirected to a different URL, always replace any internal links linking to the original URL with the new URL. Failing to do so causes your internal links to link to 301 pages instead of 200. This is bad for SEO. Redirects ensure that both users and search engines are sent to the right place. 

When you run a website audit in SE Ranking, the tool will flag internal links pointing to redirected pages in the Issue report > HTTP Status Code section.

HTTP Status Code section  in SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool HTTP Status Code section  in SE Ranking’s Website Audit tool

Update these links to point directly to the new URL. This is crucial when links could cause page issues, such as when a site moves to HTTPS but internal links still use HTTP. Redirects also slightly diminish link authority, so direct links are always the better option.

Nofollow internal link

The nofollow attribute tells search engines not to pass authority or link juice to the linked page. While it can be helpful for external links you don’t want to “vote for”, using it on internal links can backfire by preventing the transfer of link equity between your pages.

For example:

  • A standard internal link (Page) passes SEO value.
  • A nofollow internal link (Page) doesn’t.

Use SE Ranking’s Website Audit to find internal links on your website with the rel=”nofollow” attribute. Check if you have these issues under the Internal links section and follow the tool’s tips to fix them.

Nofollow internal linksNofollow internal links

Anchor text inconsistencies

The words you use for internal links—known as anchor text—are crucial.

Avoid using anchor text with different search intents for the same page. For example, don’t link “beginner’s guide to photography” to a page selling advanced camera equipment. This mismatch confuses users and doesn’t help Google understand the page’s content.

You should also avoid using identical anchor text for different pages, like a landing page and a blog post. Each page should have unique, descriptive anchor text that clarifies its purpose.

Finally, steer clear of irrelevant or misleading anchor text. Anchor text should accurately reflect the linked page’s content. For example, link a page about “10 tips for better sleep” with “sleep improvement tips” rather than “bed linen sets to try”. This ensures users know exactly what to expect when they click while enabling search engines to understand and categorize your content correctly.

A Final Word

The power of internal linking for SEO is often overlooked, yet a strong strategy can bring you closer to reaching your goals. Identify your cornerstone content and ensure these pages stand out as the most prominent on your website.

Whether you carefully plan anchor texts or insert internal links naturally, always prioritize your users. Internal links should be relevant and bring value to your website visitors.

منبع: https://seranking.com/blog/internal-links/