Internal links and SEO: Best practices, examples and tips

2024-11-08 00:00:10

Imagine your website as a garden, with each page being a different planting bed.

Internal links are the paths that guide visitors to keep strolling through your garden, leading them on a journey through your landscape to discover new plants and ideas.

Expert gardeners make sure to design lots of clearly marked paths and avoid any dead ends.

Just like with gardens, having lots of paths to all the beautiful content on your site can help improve the user experience while boosting organic search rankings and website engagement.

Best practices for internal linking

Creating an effective internal linking strategy is key to guiding users seamlessly through your site while improving your SEO performance. Below are some guidelines to remember.

Create a logical site structure, including URLs and ecommerce categories or folders.
Build a comprehensive library with the most important content for your users.
Link to the most relevant and valuable content users would want to see next.
Write anchor text that’s concise, effective, specific and relevant.
Optimize link placement. Links in content higher on the page are more valuable – you’re telling users this is the next step.
Optimize navigation in headers, footers, sidebars and breadcrumbs. Include valuable pages customized by topic, intent, category or purpose.
Balance link quantity and distribution.
Use anchor/jump links to link to a specific section on a page.
Understand how/when to nofollow, especially for sponsored links.
Set expectations and a process for everyone involved in your SEO/editorial team.
Make it a habit to update internal links when new content is published.
Audit internal links regularly. Optimize links using info like site searches, multipage sessions, dead clicks from heatmaps and user testing.

Effective copywriting for anchor link text

Internal link anchor text checklist

Good anchor text should meet the basic criteria of being clear, concise and helpful. It should:

Look good on mobile and desktop.
Be easy to click on mobile.
Not compete with the main content.
Make it clear what you can do there.
Not be repetitive or overly optimized.
Include the right keywords.
Avoid ambiguity or cannibalization with other pages.
Be clearly formatted as a link.
Not include generic phrases like “click here” or “read more.”
Fit naturally in the content flow.

Great anchor text can also take it a step further and must:

Compel the user to click with a strong verb, adjective or implied action.
Send the user to the relevant next stage in the learning or buying funnel if they’re ready.
Promise the user the click will be worth it by phrasing it as the answer they’re looking for.
Demonstrate more info is available to prove you’re the expert, even if users don’t click it.

Ask yourself: What would users do?

If you’re unsure if it counts as good anchor text, read the section and click on the link. Ask yourself: What would users do/expect? What would I want if I were this user?

What if the user clicks this link? Would they expect what comes next?
What if the user doesn’t understand this part?
What if the user is ready to move to the next step in the buying funnel?
What if the user is one of the exceptions we mentioned earlier?
What if we can help users self-select into different paths?
What if there’s no logical next step on our site?

Examples of effective internal linking

Consider some link text case studies from a user’s perspective and ideas to optimize it to be clear, specific and helpful.

Instead of: Click here
Try: How to choose, Get your free report
- User: “I know this is a link. Why should I click it?”

Instead of: Get help
Try: Chat with support, Talk to an expert
- User: “Help from who? I don’t want to talk to a person; that’s why I’m on your site.”

Instead of: Buy now
Try: Add to cart, Claim yours now
- User: “Will I go to checkout next if I click this? What if I’m not done shopping?”

Instead of: Learn more
Try: Estimate your cost, Get costs for your state
- User: “I don’t want to learn more; I want to buy. Why won’t you just give me the price?”

Instead of: Read reviews
Try: Search 300+ user reviews, Read reviews (4.5 stars)
- User: “Whose review is it? Why should I trust it? What can I do with that info?”

Instead of: Contact us
Try: Get a free quote, Email support
- User: “How can I get someone to come help with my problem?”

Instead of: See if you qualify
Try: Apply for pre-qualification with 500+ credit, Get your free credit score
- User: “Why can’t you tell me if I qualify? If you can’t tell me, I probably don’t qualify.”

Instead of: Find out how
Try: Compare 13+ options, Find your local pro
- User: “Why can’t you show me the answer?”

Instead of: Get solutions for your needs
Try: Try the quiz to find your perfect tool, Compare the best picks
- User: How do you know what I need?

Instead of: Shop now
Try: Filter by style, Filter by color/size, Filter by occasion
- User: “What’s the best way for me to narrow down my options?”

How to audit your internal links

You can run basic internal link audits with free tools or tools you probably already have access to, like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

SEO plugins like Detailed SEO and All In One SEO are great when you need to quickly spot-check any page.

Internal link audit tools

Ahrefs
Screaming Frog
Search Console
Google Analytics
Plugins like All In One SEO, Detailed, Yoast, Ahrefs, etc.

Internal link audits to run

For a basic internal link audit, start by finding broken links and orphan pages without any internal links to help improve crawling. After that, you can work on optimizing links and link text.

Identify and fix broken links.
Check for canonical links.
Analyze link distribution.
Export link title text.
Find orphan pages.
Search for internal link opportunities.
Filter for link text cannibalization.

How to measure the impact of internal linking

Once you’ve nailed your internal linking strategy, training and process, use some common benchmarks to see how well you can maintain linking best practices.

Key metrics to track your internal linking expertise include:

Number of internal links/backlinks per page: How well you’re linking to your own content.
Pages per session: How many users are clicking an internal link to another page on your site.
Bounce rate / Engaged sessions: How many users are vs aren’t interacting with your content.
Orphan pages: How many pages have 0 internal links from other pages on your site.
Page depth: How many clicks it would take for a user to go from the homepage to a given page.

15 common internal linking practices to rethink

As internal linking strategies evolve, many people seek clear-cut answers to common linking questions.

However, like most aspects of SEO, the real answer is often “it depends” or “consider what’s best for the user.”

Google is aware of outdated linking tricks, so trying to game the system is unlikely to yield long-term results.

Rather than blindly following the latest trend or strategy, it’s important to understand the rules and remain flexible.

Here are 15 internal linking scenarios that SEOs must address:

Use the exact same phrase every time you link to that page.
- Problem: That’s a well-known spammy technique that can make your site seem overly optimized for SEO instead of optimized for users.
- Solution: Include a variety of the top keywords you want the page to rank for and consider different variants and the context on each page.
Link any words that could be relevant to that page, even if they’re not the exact keywords you’re targeting.
- Problem: That can cause cannibalization issues if all the linking signals seem the same to Google.
- Solution: Consider the targeted keywords for each page and find the most relevant places to link.
Include as many links as possible on each page.
- Problem: It’s believed that Google only crawls a certain number of links, roughly 150 total, including your navigation. Adding more links won’t add any extra value.
- Solution: Include your most relevant links near the top and make sure your navigation won’t put any page over the link crawl cap.
Never add links at the top of the page. That’s like telling the user they’re on the wrong page when they just got here
- Problem: Some intents are ambiguous and some users may land on the wrong page for what they need.
- Solution: Help users get to the right place if there’s a chance they need some other answer. Make it clear on both pages who this content is for.
Don’t link to the same page twice on the same page.
- Problem: Google doesn’t care about duplicate links to the same page, but it will count toward your link crawl cap.
- Solution: Include multiple links to the same page if there’s a good reason.
You can include hidden links and Google will still count it.
- Problem: It’s generally a bad idea to have content hidden from all or certain users.
- Solution: If the link isn’t relevant enough to show users, remove it from your page.
Link copy should be as short as possible.
- Problem: Link copy that’s too short might lose its meaning.
- Solution: Link copy should be as short as possible, but its intent should be clear. It should also be long enough that it’s easy to click on mobile.
Links to your site should open in a new tab to increase engagement stats.
- Problem: Google Analytics doesn’t count engagement if your user is in another tab. And users might not expect to be sent to a different tab for the same browsing journey on a website.
- Solution: Present a consistent experience for users and let them control where links open.
Links to external sites should always be nofollow.
- Problem: If you don’t want to pass link equity to that site, why are you linking to it at all?
- Solution: Only link to external sites that are high quality.
Never include links to external sites. You should only include internal links (links to your own site).
- Problem: Relevant external links help build credibility and trustworthiness for your site, especially in page sources.
- Solution: Don’t be selfish with links. It’s OK to link to external sites that are valuable and relevant for users.
Don’t start a sentence with a link.
- Problem: Sometimes, the most relevant place for a link is the first few words of the sentence, and rewording it can make it more confusing.
- Solution: Tell your team you can start a sentence with a link, just like you can start a sentence with a preposition.
Don’t include links in headers because it looks weird.
- Problem: Users pay more attention to headers, and they often like clicking relevant info in headers.
- Solution: Take a look at heatmap data and use links in headers if there’s a good reason.
Don’t include links in specific sections/pages because it could break the code.
- Problem: Users don’t care about code limitations, and neither should you.
- Solution: Work with your development or tech SEO to understand the risks and limitations of the current systems and develop a plan to improve linking flexibility.
My team shouldn’t worry about linking. That’s for some other person/team to worry about.
- Problem: If only one person’s responsible for linking, it’ll be harder to find new link opportunities.
- Solution: Make sure everyone knows who should be including links and train everyone on best practices.
We don’t have time to add links now. We can just add links later.
- Problem: Adding internal links to new content can help it get crawled faster. And no one wants to do more work auditing later.
- Solution: Set up a process to add internal links as new content is published or updated.

Future trends in internal linking

As SEO tools continue to advance, I’m hopeful we’ll see more automated suggestions for internal linking directly within CMS platforms.

It would also be valuable to have comparison metrics with competitors – perhaps an AI-powered link bot that crawls the SERPs for your page’s top keywords and counts the number of internal backlinks competitors have for similar pages.

Ultimately, having a strong grasp of the basic principles of internal linking will help SEOs make the most of these advanced tools in the future.