Internal linking plays an important role in search engine optimization, or SEO, as it helps the search engines index and understand your website. The best type of internal links are those that are relevant to users and search engines alike, help users navigate your site more easily, and help search engines better categorize your content. This guide will walk you through what internal linking is, why it’s important to SEO, and how you can implement it on your website.
3D illustration of computer keyboard with the script Internal Links on two adjacent buttons, and two links of chain connecting these butons.
What is internal linking?
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Internal linking is simply using your content to point readers directly to other pages on your site. Rather than having someone land on a single page and then try to go elsewhere, internal links make it possible for visitors to get where they want without ever leaving your site. Internal links provide much more value than external links, which only direct people offsite, so using them as part of search engine optimization is a great idea. Here’s why you should use internal links for SEO services.
Let’s start with something simple: navigation menus. Many sites rely solely on navigation menus at either the top or bottom of each page, but if you’re trying to improve SEO rankings, you need to be more creative about directing users around your site in an organized way that will appeal to search engines like Google.
Things to remember about internal links
Some internal links are even more important than most external links when it comes to search engine optimization. These canonical pages have only one URL, so they’re easier to crawl and index. If a search bot sees multiple versions of a URL from different domains (i.e., on linked sites), then it could think that those versions represent duplicate content or spammy tactics designed to inflate search rankings. When you link to your own site from within, you’re showing Google that these pages are part of your website and not someone else’s. The same goes for links within social media posts—they help Google determine which URLs should be included in its index.
How to add value with your internal links
When we link to pages within our site, we are directing people to a valuable part of our site. We have complete control over what that valuable part contains. So why not add something extra? By adding a description or additional information about an internal page, we are giving value to both new visitors and return visitors who might be interested in another aspect of your site. This can also help search engines decide which results are most relevant for a particular search query.
The dangers of too many internal links
Having too many internal links isn’t just an annoyance—it’s a potential search engine killer. When you start to hit high numbers of outgoing links (aka, internal links), you start to create what we call link ambiguity. If Google detects too many of these kinds of links on your site, it may interpret that as