Internal linking

Why does internal linking matter for SEO?

Google finds many URLs by following links from pages it already knows. A page without internal links can only be found through a sitemap or links from other sites. Google’s link guidelines therefore say that every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.

The anchor text, the visible text of a link, gives users and Google context about the target page. Google recommends anchor text that is descriptive and reasonably concise and advises against generic text such as “click here” or “read more.” When an image is the link, Google uses the image’s alt attribute as anchor text.

Internal links also express structure. Pages that are linked from the navigation and from many related pages are easy to reach. Pages that can only be reached after many clicks are harder for users to find and tend to be discovered later by crawlers. Unlike external links, internal linking is entirely under the site owner’s control.

Types of internal links

• Navigational links: main menu, footer, breadcrumbs. They repeat across many pages and define the site hierarchy.
• Contextual links: links inside the body text that point to a related page at the moment it becomes relevant.
• Module links: automatically generated lists such as related posts, bestsellers, or “customers also viewed.”

Example

A buying guide for running shoes links to a category page in the text:

<p>For long runs on pavement, look at
  <a href="/running-shoes/cushioned/">cushioned running shoes</a>
  with a higher heel-to-toe drop.</p>

The anchor text describes the target, and the link is a standard <a> element with an href attribute. Google can reliably extract only links of this kind. A <span> with a click handler or an <a> without href is not a crawlable link. Links inserted with JavaScript work as long as they use this markup.

FAQ

What are the two main types of internal links? Navigational links, which appear site-wide in menus and footers, and contextual links within the content.

Does internal linking help SEO? It helps Google discover pages and understand their context through anchor text. Google gives no fixed number of internal links per page. What matters is whether users and crawlers can reach the related pages.

How can I find the internal links on my website? A crawl of the site lists every internal link, broken links, redirects, orphan pages, and the click depth of each URL. The Links report in Search Console shows which pages are linked most often internally, limited to a sample of 1,000 rows.

Last updated: October 8, 2026