Internal Linking Strategy: How to Plan Your Site's Links
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- You need
- A list of your pages, Search Console access
- Optional
- A site crawler to export links
On this page
An internal linking strategy is a plan for how the pages on your site link to each other, so search engines can find every important page and people can follow a topic from one page to the next. Choose your priority pages, group related pages under a hub, fix pages with no links pointing to them, and use clear anchor text in standard HTML links. This guide is part of our technical SEO guide.
You'll need a list of your site's indexable pages and access to Search Console. A site crawler that exports internal links makes step 3 faster, but a spreadsheet works for small sites.
What internal links do
Internal links do three jobs. They help search engines discover pages: Google says most new pages it finds are found through links from pages it already knows. They help search engines understand pages: Google uses links as a relevance signal, and the anchor text tells it what the linked page is about. And they help people navigate, moving from a general page to the specific one they need.
A page with no internal links pointing to it, often called an orphan page, depends entirely on a sitemap or outside links to be found. Google's own guidance is simple: every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.
Links only help if crawlers can follow them. Here is the difference between a link Google can follow and one it may not, with placeholder paths:
<a href="/services/roof-repair">roof repair services</a>
<span onclick="goTo('/services/roof-repair')">Learn more</span>How a hub-and-spoke structure works
The most useful pattern for topic-based sites is hub and spoke. One hub page gives an overview of a topic and links to every detailed page on it. Each detailed page, or spoke, links back to the hub and across to its closest neighbours. Readers can go deep on one question, then step back out to the overview.
The hub structure also helps you spot gaps. If a spoke has nothing natural to link to, the topic may be missing a page, or that spoke may belong in a different hub.
We explain why covering a topic in depth matters in topical authority.
Steps
- Choose the pages that matter most.
List the pages that earn enquiries or sales, such as service and product pages, plus the hub pages for your main topics. These are the pages that should receive the most relevant internal links. Mark them in your page list. Every later step checks whether these pages get the links and anchor text they deserve.
- Group pages into topics with one hub page each.
Sort your page list by topic, using your keyword map if you have one. Give each topic one hub page that covers the overview and links to every page in the group. If no page can play that role, plan one. Pages that fit no topic are candidates to merge, redirect or retire.
- Find orphan and weakly linked pages.
In Search Console, open the Links report and look at the top internally linked pages. Google notes this report shows a sample, not every link, so treat it as a guide. For a complete picture, export internal links with a site crawler and compare them with your page list. Flag every page with zero or very few internal links.
- Use standard, crawlable links.
Google can reliably follow links only when they are `<a>` elements with an `href` attribute that resolves to a real URL. Links made only with JavaScript click events, or `<span>` and button elements, may not be followed. Links inserted with JavaScript are fine if they use the same HTML markup. Check your menus, cards and "read more" buttons.
- Write anchor text that explains the target.
Google describes good anchor text as descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both pages. Read the anchor text on its own: if you can't tell what the page is about, rewrite it. Avoid "click here" and "read more", and don't cram keywords into anchors. Google points out that keyword stuffing breaks its spam policies.
- Link in context, and space links out.
Place links inside sentences that explain why the reader should follow them. Google says the words around a link matter, and advises against chaining several links side by side. Link from the paragraph where the related question naturally comes up, not from a block of links at the end of the page.
- Point every link at the final, canonical URL.
Link to the address you want indexed, not a redirected, parameter or duplicate version. Google advises linking to the canonical URL to send a consistent signal. After a URL change, update internal links to the new address instead of relying on the redirect, so crawlers and visitors take the direct route.
- Add links whenever you publish, and review quarterly.
Each new page needs links in, not just links out. When you publish, add links to it from the hub and from two or three older pages on the same topic. Every quarter, rerun step 3 to catch new orphan pages, broken links and links to redirects.
Links are one part of every page review on our on-page SEO checklist. If you'd rather have your site's structure planned and maintained for you, our in-house SEO team handles site structure, metadata and content.
Anchor text: good and weak examples
The anchor text is the clickable words of a link. These examples show the difference between anchors that explain the target page and anchors that don't.
| Weak anchor | Better anchor | Why |
|---|---|---|
| click here | roof repair services | Says what the page offers |
| read more | how to choose a roofing material | Makes sense out of context |
| this article | our guide to gutter maintenance | Names the topic |
| roof repair roofer roofing repair | roof repair | Clear, no keyword cramming |
Troubleshooting
A new page isn't being found or indexed
Cause: the page has few or no internal links, or its only links sit in places crawlers can't follow, such as script-driven buttons. Google finds most new pages through links. A page reachable only from a sitemap, or several clicks deep, may be found late or treated as unimportant.
Fix: add contextual links to the page from its hub and from two or three related pages that already get crawled, using descriptive anchor text. Check those links are standard `<a href>` elements in the rendered HTML, using URL Inspection in Search Console. Include the page in your XML sitemap if you have one, then request indexing. If it still isn't indexed after a few weeks, check its content and indexing status rather than adding more links.
An important page gets few internal links
Cause: the page was published and then forgotten, or newer pages took over the topic. Service pages often suffer from this, because blog posts link to each other but rarely to the page that sells. In Search Console's Links report, the page sits far down the top internally linked list.
Fix: go through every page in the same topic and look for sentences where the service or product is mentioned. Turn those mentions into links with clear anchor text. Make sure the topic's hub page links to it prominently. Don't add links where they don't fit the sentence. A handful of relevant, in-context links does more for readers than many forced ones.
Links point to redirects or old URLs
Cause: URLs changed during a redesign or a slug update, and the redirects were added but the internal links were never updated. Every internal click then passes through a redirect, and Google sees your own site linking to non-canonical addresses.
Fix: export internal links with a site crawler and filter for any that return a redirect or an error. Update each one to point straight at the final URL, starting with links in navigation, hub pages and your most visited pages. Keep the redirects in place for outside links and bookmarks. After a migration, rerun this check, since templates and old content often keep the previous addresses.
Common questions
How many internal links should a page have?
There's no set number. Google says there's no magical ideal number of links a page should contain, but if you think it's too much, it probably is. Link where a reader would genuinely want to go next, and make sure every important page has at least one link from another relevant page. A long guide naturally carries more links than a short contact page.
Do links in the menu and footer count as internal links?
Yes. Navigation and footer links are internal links that crawlers can follow, and they help search engines discover your main sections. But they repeat on every page and say little about how pages relate. Contextual links inside body copy, with descriptive anchor text and surrounding sentences, explain those relationships. A good structure uses both: navigation for the main sections and body links for topics.
Should internal links use nofollow?
Generally, no. Google's guidance reserves nofollow for links you don't trust, plus sponsored and user-generated links. Your own pages don't fall into those groups. If a page shouldn't appear in search, use noindex on that page instead. Adding nofollow to your own internal links mainly makes it harder for search engines to understand how your pages connect.