Internal Linking for SEO: Why It Matters and How to Get It Right

Let’s say your website is a library. Your content is the books. Your internal links are the carefully labeled aisles that guide visitors (and search engines) through your carefully curated collections. 

If your content isn’t interlinked, it might as well be gathering dust on a forgotten shelf. 

Internal links do more than just connect pages; they help Google understand your site’s structure, establish content hierarchy, and push key pages toward better rankings. Google’s own John Mueller says internal links are “critical for SEO.” But how critical? Let’s hear from Mueller himself: 

I think it’s one of the biggest things that you can do on a website to kind of guide Google and guide visitors to the pages that you think are important. 

And what you think is important is totally up to you. 

You can decide to make things important where you earn the most money or you can make things important where you’re the strongest competitor or maybe you’re the weakest competitor. 

With internal linking you can really kind of focus things on those directions and those parts of your site. 

And that’s not something that you can just replace with structured data. 

So just because there is a structured data in a page somewhere, I wouldn’t see that as a replacement for normal internal linking. 

Even if in the structured data you also provide URLs, we don’t use those URLs in the same way as we would use normal internal links on a page. 

So it’s definitely not the case that hreflang annotations replace links between country versions or breadcrumb annotations replace links between different levels of a website. 

You should really have normal HTML links between the different parts of your website. 

And ideally, you should not just have a basic set of links, but rather you should look at it in a strategic way and think about what do you care about the most and how can you highlight that with your internal linking.

In this article, we’ll break down: 

• What internal links are and why they matter. 

• How to build an internal linking strategy. 

• Tools to help you do it efficiently and effectively. 

• What Are Internal Links?
• Why Internal Links Matter to Google (and Your Rankings)
• How to Set Up an Internal Linking Strategy
• Nofollow, Anchor Text, and Pitfalls to Avoid
• Internal Linking Tools to Streamline Your Strategy

An internal link is any link from one page on your website to another page on the same domain. 

There are two main audiences for internal links: 

• Users, who use them to navigate your site and discover related content. 

• Search engines, which use them to crawl your site, understand structure, and determine what content matters most. 

Types of Internal Links 

• Navigational links: menus, homepage links, post feeds 

• Contextual links: links within content to related articles, pages, or categories 

Contextual links are where the SEO magic really happens. They pass what’s called “link equity” and help establish topic relationships. Kind of like giving Google a gentle nudge saying, “Hey, this page is important.” 

Internal linking isn’t just about the user experience (though that’s important). It directly impacts how Google sees and ranks your content. 

Here’s why: 

1. Internal links help Google discover and index your pages.

If Googlebot can’t find a page, it can’t rank it. Internal links act like road signs guiding crawlers across your site. 

2. Interlinking establishes relationships between content.

Think of internal links as a way to show thematic relevance between pages. Linking related blog posts tells Google they’re connected and gives your whole content ecosystem more authority. 

3. Internal links prevent orphaned content.

An orphaned page has no internal links pointing to it. It’s basically invisible to search engines, so it will most likely bring in less traffic than other non-orphaned pages simply because it’s not linked from anywhere. 

4. Interlinking distributes link equity.

Link equity (aka “link juice”) is the value passed from one page to another via links. The more internal links there are pointing to a page, the more important that page appears to Google. And yes, that affects rankings. 

Here’s your road map for building a smart, SEO-friendly internal linking strategy: 

1. Determine the ideal site structure.

Your site should follow a pyramid structure: 

• Top: homepage 

• Middle: categories or sections 

• Bottom: individual posts/pages 

Make sure your menu reflects this structure so your site’s navigation can be intuitive for users and bots alike. 

2. Identify your “cornerstone” content.

Also known as content pillars. This is your best, most comprehensive content. The pieces you really want to rank. Make a list so you can prioritize optimizing these pieces. 

Tip: Cornerstone content should be heavily linked to from supporting articles. 

3. Add contextual links.

Sprinkle relevant links throughout your blog posts. Aim to: 

• Link from cluster content to cornerstone content. 

• Link between related articles. 

• Use natural, descriptive anchor text. 

4. Link hierarchical pages.

Parent > child > sibling relationships matter. Make sure you’re linking between related product categories, service pages, topic clusters, etc. 

5. Add a related posts section.

Use plugins or manual links to surface related content at the end of posts. It increases time on site and strengthens internal links. 

6. Use navigational links strategically.

Your top navigation and footer are prime real estate. Include links to high-priority pages, cornerstone content, or top-performing blog posts. 

7. Link to taxonomies (categories, tags).

Category pages help organize content and are often missed SEO opportunities. Linking to them helps Google understand your content themes. 

8. Link to newly published posts.

After publishing something new, go back and link to it from older related content. This prevents orphaning and helps new pages get indexed faster. 

9. Link to popular posts.

Highlight high-performing content in sidebars or footers. This gives them more internal link equity and helps users discover evergreen favorites. 

Internal linking can do wonders for your SEO, but it’s not a free-for-all. Just like with any strategy, there are right and wrong ways to approach it, and cutting corners can actually hurt your rankings instead of helping them. Here are a few key things to keep in mind: 

Nofollow links 

Sometimes you don’t want every internal link to pass authority. That’s where the rel=”nofollow” attribute comes in. It’s commonly used for: 

• Login or user-specific pages. 

• Duplicate or printer-friendly versions of content. 

• Low-value pages (like disclaimers or terms and conditions). 

But keep this in mind: Since 2019, Google has been treating nofollow as a hint, not a directive. In other words, it might still crawl those pages. If you truly don’t want a page appearing in search results, use noindex instead. 

Anchor text 

Anchor text (the clickable words in a link) is one of the strongest signals you can give Google about the page that’s being linked to. Be descriptive, specific, and natural. 

• Good: “Get personalized email marketing tips.” (Specific, clear, keyword-relevant, and value-driven.) 

• Bad: “Click here.” (Zero context, zero SEO value, so yawn-worthy.) 

• Worse: Stuffing keywords like “best email marketing tips email marketing blog” into one anchor (Google will see right through it). 

Common Pitfalls to Avoid 

• Over-optimizing anchor text: Repeating the same keyword-rich phrase across dozens of links looks spammy. Mix it up. 

• Too many links on a page: Google recommends keeping it “reasonable.” Hundreds of internal links on one page can dilute link equity and overwhelm users. 

• Ignoring the user experience: If your links feel forced or cluttered, users will tune out. And if users are unhappy, Google can tell and takes note.

You don’t have to manually audit every link on your site to build a strong internal linking structure (thank goodness). Several SEO tools can make this process more efficient, whether you’re on WordPress, Shopify, or another platform. 

Yoast SEO (WordPress and Shopify) 

Yoast is a classic for a reason. It offers internal linking suggestions as you write, highlights orphaned content, and includes great features: 

• Text link counter shows how many links point to and from each post. 

• Cornerstone content workout helps you prioritize and support key content. 

• Orphaned content workout surfaces pages with no internal links. 

• Block-based linking tools easily link to child and sibling pages. 

• Internal link assessment checks whether your content is link-rich before publishing. 

Ahrefs Site Audit 

Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool lets you identify orphan pages, visualize internal link distribution, and spot broken internal links. It’s especially useful for larger sites or content audits at scale. 

Screaming Frog SEO Spider 

This desktop crawler provides a detailed map of your internal linking structure. Use it to analyze crawl depth, find pages with few or no incoming links, and export reports for link optimization. 

Link Whisper (WordPress) 

This is a handy plugin that suggests internal links as you write and lets you add them in bulk with a few clicks. It also includes an orphaned content finder and smart reporting. 

Semrush Internal Linking Report 

Inside Semrush’s Site Audit tool, the Semrush Internal Linking Report flags weak internal linking, identifies pages with too many or too few links, and helps distribute link equity more effectively. 

Rank Math SEO (WordPress) 

An alternative to Yoast, Rank Math includes link suggestions, content analysis, and the ability to mark cornerstone content, all with a user-friendly interface. 

These tools help take the guesswork out of internal linking, from spotting missed opportunities to automating link suggestions. Whether you’re optimizing a handful of blog posts or managing thousands of pages, smart tooling makes it infinitely more manageable. 

If content is king, internal linking is the kingdom’s infrastructure. Without it, even the best blog post or product page can be invisible. 

The good news? Internal linking is one of the few SEO tactics you fully control. No outreach required. Just smart, intentional linking that supports your content and helps Google and users find the good stuff.