Internal Linking Guide: 10 Actionable Tips to Improve Your SEO
Internal Linking is probably the most overlooked and underrated SEO tactic, which if implemented correctly can help your site perform better in search results.
Internal links are basically links that point from one page to another page on the same domain.
In this guide we’ll discuss why they are important and what are some tips on implementing a successful internal linking strategy for old and new pages on your site.
Why are Internal Links important for SEO?
Internal Links are important for three main reasons: crawlability, authority, and relevance.
First, they help Google discover new pages on your website. Once Google has found and crawled your new page it will index and rank it.
Secondly, internal links help pass “link juice” or page rank throughout a site, helping to power or boost other pages.
For example, if your website has a page that has received lots of backlinks and has a high Page Rank, you’ll want to strategically link out to internal pages on your site that need a boost in traffic.
A third important reason is that internal links help search engines figure out what a page is about. This is done by looking at the anchor texts, as well as the text that surrounds the link.
Additionally, don’t forget that internal links help users find relevant pages on your site. In some cases they can help lower your bounce rate, since users are staying longer on your site.
Plus they’ll be able to navigate your site to other content that is relevant to their search intent.
10 Tips for Successful Internal Link Strategy
Below are 10 tips with actionable recommendations on how to implement a successful internal linking strategy.
Tip 1: Pages should be at most 3 clicks away from your homepage
As a rule of thumb, a user should be able to find any page on your site no more than 3 clicks away from the homepage.
In order to do that, you need to organize your website’s structure as a hierarchy.
With the most important pages being on top, and the least important ones on the bottom. All of them should be interconnected using structural or contextual links.
Below you can see an example. On top you’ll always have the Homepage.
Pages on your website should be at most 3 clicks away from the homepage, using structural links. You can use contextual links to link to pages that are related.
Tip 2: Your most important pages should receive the most internal links
Once you’ve identified which pages on your site are the most important, you can signal this to search engines by building the most internal links to them.
You can link to your most important pages, by placing them in the menu, side bar, or building more contextual links from relevant pages/posts on your site.
Tip 3: Links from high authority pages have the most impact
Internal links coming from the highest authority pages on your site have the most impact. You can use these pages to pass “link juice” across your domain.
First, you need to find the URLs on your website that have the most authority or backlinks.
You can find these by using different SEO tools such as Ahrefs or MOZ’s Link Explorer tool that shows you the top pages of a domain by Page Authority.
Below you can see an example of Ahrefs’ Backlinks Report. Next to each Referring Page there is a “UR” or “URL Rating” which shows the strength of your target page’s backlink profile on a scale of 0-100.
Linking from these high authority pages will help pass on authority and “link juice”. Ultimately, helping them perform better in Google search.
Tip 4: Link to relevant pages
As we already discussed above, make sure that pages link out to other relevant pages on your site. The topic and content surrounding it should be relevant and related.
This will help search engines better understand your site, as well as improve user experience.
Tip 5: Pick your anchor texts carefully
First, let’s define what an anchor text is. An anchor text is the text that is clickable and will lead you to another page on your site.
It’s usually a different color, in most cases blue, and is designed to stand out from the rest of the text.
For example, in this guide on internal linking, we can also link to the keyword research services page. There users can read about the importance of keyword research and how they can find topics to write about and increase their organic traffic.
Make sure you pick your anchor text carefully and strategically. It should be relevant to the page you’re linking to. This will help users and search engines determine what a page is about, before they even click on it.
Also, don’t use the same anchor text when linking out to different pages on your site. This will confuse Google, since you’re signaling that both pages are about the same thing.
Tip 6: Link new pages from existing pages
When you publish a new page or post on your website, it may take some time for Google to discover and index that page. To speed up this process, make sure you create internal links to your new content as soon as it’s published.
Simply update some of your older pages and posts, and add an internal link to the new page that has been just published.
Tip 7: Remove links to unimportant pages
As your website grows over time, you’ll probably end up having several pages on your site that are not as important or valuable to your business as they once were.
You want to do quick research and make sure that unimportant pages on your site have a lower number of internal links, when compared to your more important content.
Tip 8: Don’t have too many internal links on a page
Make sure you don’t bombard your users with too many links on a page. This may cause a distraction and confuse readers, as well as Google.
Even though there is no definite answer to how many internal links a page should point out to, just make sure that you’re not going overboard.
Tip 9: Fix broken internal links
Again, as your website grows over the years, chances are that you’ve deleted pages. Make sure you remove any links pointing to pages that no longer exist on your domain and give a 404 error.
This can create a bad user experience as well as create a dead end for search engine crawlers. So make sure you remove them as soon as possible.
Tip: Ahref’s Internal Backlinks report shows URLs on your site that link to 404 Pages, so you can quickly identify them and fix the issue.
Tip 10: Don't use "nofollow" attribute for your internal links
Some website owners might be wondering if they should make their internal links as “follow” or “nofollow”?
However, in Q&A video Matt Cutts (Ex-Director of Anti-Spam Department at Google) advises that websites shouldn’t use the nofollow attribute on their internal links, and that this is actually doing more harm that good for a website.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully this guide has shown the importance of having a good internal linking strategy in place.
Ultimately it boils down to having the most important pages on your site having a high number of internal links pointing to them, while those that are not as important should have a much lower number.
Over time, this can help your site rank higher in Google Search results as well as improve user experience.
