Internal links are the links within your own website: from your homepage to your services page, from one blog post to a related one, from your about page to your contact page. They sound trivial, but they're one of the most underrated SEO signals.
Why are internal links important?
1. Visitors find their way more easily
Without clear internal links, visitors hit a dead end: they read one page and leave the site. With good internal links, they can click through to related info, which increases your 'time on site' and conversions.
2. Google understands your site structure better
Google's crawlers follow links to map your entire site. Pages that are linked from several other pages are seen as more important. Pages without any incoming internal links are hard for Google to find.
3. Ranking power gets shared
If your homepage has a lot of authority (for example thanks to external backlinks), that authority flows through internal links to the pages it links to. That's how you help your deeper pages rank too.
How many internal links is good?
- 0-2 internal links: too few. Google sees your page as 'isolated'.
- 3-10 internal links: the acceptable minimum.
- 10-30 internal links: good. Most service pages and blog posts are in this range.
- 30+ internal links: only for hubs like a homepage or blog index.
What makes a good internal link?
- Relevance: only link when the topic is genuinely related. Randomly linking to 'contact' at the end of every paragraph isn't helpful.
- Descriptive anchor text: instead of 'click here' → 'read our article about link building'. The anchor text tells Google what the linked page is about.
- Variety: don't always use exactly the same anchor text for the same page. Mix it up.
- Natural: don't force links. If they don't fit logically into the text, leave them out.
In practice: how do you improve this?
Go through your 5-10 most important pages and look for places where you can logically refer to other pages on your site. Describe the linked page with anchor text that says what to expect. Do this once a month for a few pages, and within a year you'll have a strong internal link structure.