Definition
Internal linking is linking between pages on your own site, which helps visitors navigate and helps search engines find pages and see how they relate.
Internal linking explained
Internal links come from navigation menus, breadcrumbs, footers and, most valuably, contextual links within content. Search engines follow them to discover pages, use the anchor text to understand what the target page is about, and treat heavily linked pages as more important.
A strong internal linking structure:
- Links from high-authority pages, such as the homepage and popular guides, to pages that need a boost.
- Uses descriptive anchor text rather than “click here”.
- Connects pages within the same topic cluster in both directions.
- Keeps important pages within a few clicks of the homepage.
- Avoids orphan pages and links pointing to redirects or errors.
Internal links are one of the few ranking levers entirely under your control, and adding a handful of relevant links to an underperforming page from related articles is often enough to lift it.
Example
Your new “commercial solar panel installation” page gets no traction. You add contextual links to it from five related guides that already rank, using anchor text like “commercial solar installation”, and it starts ranking within a few weeks.
Why it matters
Internal links pass authority and context around your site, so they decide which pages search engines see as your most important.
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Related terms
- Anchor textAnchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link, which tells readers and search engines what the linked page is about.
- Orphan pageAn orphan page is a page no other page on your site links to, so crawlers and visitors can only reach it via a sitemap, external link or direct URL.
- Crawl depthCrawl depth is the number of clicks it takes to reach a page from the homepage by following internal links.
- Content clusterA content cluster is a group of pages on one topic: a central pillar page covering the subject broadly, linked to and from detailed pages on each subtopic.
- Pillar pageA pillar page is a comprehensive page that covers a broad topic at overview level and links to more detailed pages on each subtopic.