Simply put, if you want your website content to rank in search results, it requires both internal and external links. External links in SEO are important so that Google can better locate your pages and posts. SEO internal links, while not as heavily promoted as their external counterpart, also have a major role to play. They can establish your website’s hierarchy, enhance the importance of certain pages, and provide Google with a general outline of the structure of your site.

What is an internal link?

An internal link, in general terms, is a link placed on a website’s page that links to a different page on the same site. While it may seem simple on the surface, there is a lot that goes into internal hyperlinks. Therefore, as you start to implement this into your website, it can be useful to make yourself familiar with this internal linking guide. Our SEO guide to internal linking will go over everything you need to know to find success and be confident with it.

What is internal linking in SEO?

This on page internal linking is done for two main reasons. Firstly, the search engines use these links to navigate around the site – a page cannot be found if no links point towards it. Secondly, users utilise these internal site links to get around the site and locate the content they desire.

As you might expect, there are numerous different SEO internal links available. These include:

Homepage
Menu links

Sidebar links
Footer links
Post feed
Contextual links

internal links diagram

What is internal linking in SEO?

Not only is it helpful for navigation purposes, but it also helps your SEO efforts and standing with Google. Your visitors can easily navigate from one page to another or be drawn to a page they otherwise would have missed. Google does the same thing when crawling your site to index pages. If you have more internal links, they can find more pages that would have been harder to spot.

Why are internal links important for SEO?

Google uses many methods to discover content and rank its relevancy, and this is why on-page and off-page SEO campaigns are introduced to so many brands. While you may think internal linking is part of off page SEO, internal linking is part of on page SEO, and you are actually thinking of external links. Both the use of SEO internal links as well as external are important, but they are different areas of SEO, and it is important not to confuse the two. You want to be looking to start an on-page SEO campaign if you want to improve your internal linking and an off-page external links SEO campaign, implementing link building techniques if you want to further boost your ranking.

However, no matter what guide you read on the use of links in SEO, you will notice that they highlight the importance of both internal links and external links.

If a page is receiving a lot of high-value external links, this signals to Google that it’s a worthwhile page that delivers quality content. This is also relevant with regards to internal links. If you’re smart with your internal links SEO campaign, you can guide Google – and your visitors – to the most significant pages on your website. As the site owner, the best aspect of this is you have total control over the internal links that are used.

Navigational links

When you think about internal links for SEO, your initial thoughts may go towards navigational links. These are the links that allow users to easily move around your website.

These navigational links are typically found at the top of a website in the menu, where they point to the main sections of the site. The footer can also be used to supply further navigational links. The logic behind this is that once a user has browsed through a page and failed to find what they desired, the footer can be their last resort for a solution, but this isn’t recommended as the best place to put a link.

When it comes to internal linking SEO strategies, these navigational links highlight the most important pages for search engines.

Contextual links

What is internal link building without contextual links? Although before explaining how essential they are, let’s first describe this type of link.

A contextual link is one that is placed within the content of a website’s page. Take the following internal links example:

At Click Intelligence, our managed SEO campaigns help you understand what an internal link is and how it can be best used.

As you see with the highlighted text, “managed SEO campaigns” is where we have incorporated that particular internal link. If someone wants to find out more about these SEO campaigns, they can simply click the link and be transported directly to the relevant page. As for the likes of Google, this delivers link equity to the managed SEO campaigns page. It’s a win-win!

Keep in mind that it’s integral you don’t go overboard with your contextual links. If you’re writing a blog post that is 1,000 words, for example, try and aim for a maximum of five high-quality internal links. This will ensure each link – including the navigational ones – have maximum impact.

The Importance of Anchor Text in Internal Link Building SEO Campaigns

An anchor text is a keyword(s) that is used when creating the contextual links for your internal links SEO strategy. Using the previous example again, “managed SEO campaigns” was the anchor text. When picking this text for your SEO page link, there are various factors to consider.

First of all, you have to pick the right type of anchor text. There are several different options, and these include:

Exact match: An “exact match” is what was used for the aforementioned example. This is where the anchor text mirrors the title of the page it’s being linked to.
Partial match: As the name implies, this is a variation of the linked-to page keyword. For instance, say you’re linking to a “content writing services” page. This could be partially changed to “content writing services pricing”.

Naked link: This is where the actual URL is utilised as the anchor. Example: clickintelligence.co.uk
Branded: This is when the brand/business name is used for the anchor text — an example would be: “Click Intelligence” links to our “About Us” page.
Generic: A generic anchor text is one that employs a common word or phrase. This could be something like “read more” or “click here.” While “Click here” SEO anchors offer clear instruction for those reading the content about where to click, some SEO experts do recommend avoiding this option as it doesn’t tell people exactly what they are clicking on.
Natural: A natural anchor text is a phrase that includes a keyword, such as “content writing services”; for example, this could be “we provide content writing services.”

When it comes to your internal links best practices, it’s often recommended to avoid the generic route if you want an SEO-friendly anchor text. A “Click here” might convince users to visit the page, but it isn’t ideal for grabbing the attention of Google.

To produce an effective anchor text, you should first make it relevant to the internal page. If the link is also related to the page it is placed on, even better. In addition, aim for an anchor text which isn’t overly keyword-heavy or wordy.

anchor text example

Are there internal links bad for SEO?

When it comes to internal linking for SEO, you do have to be careful that you don’t do anything to harm your efforts. While internal links themselves aren’t bad for SEO, the quantity and how you include them can often leave negative impacts if you aren’t careful. Internal links and SEO have a fine balance between doing good and doing harm. Therefore, you need to know this to avoid facing the negative impacts of your internal linking map.

How Many Internal Links Per Page

Google has said that more than 100 internal links are too much. In fact, they described it as excessive. Therefore, the goal is to always have fewer than 100. Having more than 100 would be that you are splitting the PageRank of that page over hundreds of links, and that is not what you want.

Including your Links

Where and how you include your link can make or break your SEO. For instance, using “click here” isn’t preferable to other anchor texts. Often internal links in footer SEO strategies are best avoided as Google may see this as structure manipulation. If you are guilty of anchor text stuffing, you may also find your ranking drops. If you take a look at a great internal linking case study, you won’t find examples of these tactics.

The harm caused by broken internal SEO links

It’s essential you look out for broken internal links. These are links that don’t work on your page, aka ones that lead to an invalid area on your website. The more broken links you accumulate, the more it’s going to hurt your site’s link equity. Despite all your hard work on your SEO internal linking strategy, it could come undone by these broken links. This is why turning to a website internal linking checker is vital.

Using an internal links checker

Fortunately, there are various internal linking tools you can use to audit your internal links. With an internal link audit, you can spot if there are any issues – such as broken links – and correct these before they become a notable detriment to your SEO efforts. You don’t have to do this internal linking audit yourself. You can find an internal linking service that uses an internal linking checker.

If your website is built with WordPress, there’s a plugin available that makes the job easy. Simply install the Broken Link Checker, monitor the links on your site, and get rid of the ones that are deemed broken. This internal link checker WordPress has will ensure you aren’t doing anything to damage your interlinking SEO efforts.