freeseobot

Internal Linking for SEO: A Simple System That Scales

How internal links help Google find and understand your pages, the anchor text rules Google publishes, and a simple way to find and add the right links.

By freeseobot Editorial · Published · 6 min read

Internal links are links from one page on your site to another. They help Google find your pages, understand what each one is about, and judge which ones matter most. Google's documentation is direct about the basics: every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site, the link should be a normal <a href> link, and the clickable text should describe the page it points to.

The rest of this guide turns that into a routine you can repeat every month, by hand or with a tool.

They do three jobs:

  • Discovery. Googlebot finds most new pages by following links. Google's link best practices say it "generally follows only <a> elements that have an href attribute". A page with no links pointing to it, often called an orphan page, may be found late or not at all.
  • Context. The words you link with tell Google and readers what the target page covers. Google uses anchor text to understand pages, which is why its guidance asks for descriptive text.
  • Priority. Pages linked from your home page and main menu, and from many other pages, look more important than pages buried five clicks deep.

Internal links are also the one kind of link you fully control. You do not need anyone's permission to add them.

What Google says about link format and anchor text

Google's Search Central page on crawlable links sets out the rules. In short:

Do Avoid
Use <a href="/page"> with a real URL Links built from <span> or onclick only
Write descriptive anchor text, like "boiler servicing prices" "Click here", "read more", "this page"
Keep anchor text concise Whole sentences as links
Give links surrounding context Long lists of links with no text between them
Use the image's alt text when an image is the link Empty image links
Write naturally Stuffing keywords into anchor text

Links added by JavaScript are fine, as long as the final page uses the same standard <a href> markup.

Google's page does not recommend nofollow on internal links. It suggests nofollow for external links you do not trust, and sponsored or ugc for paid and user-generated links. Leave your own internal links as normal links.

How many internal links should a page have?

Google gives no ideal number. Its guidance is only that a page with a very large number of links probably has too many. A practical rule for small business sites:

  • Every page links to at least 2 to 3 relevant pages.
  • Every important page receives links from at least 3 to 5 other pages, plus the menu or a hub page.
  • No page relies on the sitemap alone to be found.

Start by finding orphan pages and pages with very few links pointing to them.

  • Search Console. Open Links > Internal links > Top linked pages. This lists your pages by how many internal links point to them. Pages near the bottom, or missing entirely, need attention. Click a URL to see which pages link to it. Each table shows up to 1,000 rows.
  • A site crawl. Our free SEO checker crawls your site and flags pages no other page links to, plus internal links that point to missing pages.
  • Compare with your sitemap. Any URL in your XML sitemap that does not appear in a crawl from the home page is an orphan.

Orphan and weakly linked pages often show up in Search Console as "Discovered - currently not indexed". Our guide on why a page isn't indexed covers that status.

Not every page needs a boost. Prioritise:

  1. Money pages. Services, products, booking and contact pages.
  2. Pages close to page one. In Search Console, filter Performance for pages with an average position between about 5 and 20. These already rank, and stronger internal linking is one of the cheapest ways to help them.
  3. New pages. Link to them from older, established pages so Google finds them sooner.

The best source pages are related to the target topic and already get traffic or links. To find them:

  • Search your own site on Google with site:yourdomain.com "topic words". The results are pages Google associates with that topic.
  • In Search Console Performance, look at your top pages by clicks. They are your strongest candidates.
  • Read the source page and find a sentence that already mentions the topic. Turn those words into the link, or add one sentence that does.

If you write "We also install new combi boilers" on your servicing page, link "install new combi boilers" to your installation page. That is better than adding "Related: click here" at the bottom.

While you are working through pages, clean up links that send visitors and crawlers the long way round:

  • Links to redirects. Update them to point straight at the final URL. Google's site move guidance recommends sending old URLs directly to their destination and avoiding chains.
  • Links to 404 pages. Point them at the right page or remove them. Our guide to finding and fixing broken links covers this.
  • Links to non-canonical URLs. If a page has a canonical tag pointing elsewhere, link to the canonical version.

Step 5: Build hub pages

A hub page introduces a topic and links to every detailed page about it. A plumber might have a "Heating services" page linking to servicing, installation, repairs and power flushing. Each of those links back to the hub and to one or two siblings.

This structure keeps every page a few clicks from the home page and makes the relationship between pages obvious to readers and to Google.

How to automate internal linking safely

Internal linking is a good fit for automation with a human in the loop.

Safe to automate:

  • Finding orphan pages and pages with few incoming links.
  • Spotting broken internal links and links that point at redirects.
  • Suggesting source pages that mention a topic but do not link to it.

Keep human:

  • Choosing which suggestions to accept.
  • Editing a sentence so the link reads naturally.

Avoid plugins that automatically turn every mention of a keyword into a link across the whole site. They tend to create many identical anchors, link from irrelevant pages and make text hard to read, which is the "keyword stuffing" Google's link guidance warns against.

When you connect a site to freeseobot, the dashboard suggests internal links for pages that are close to ranking, showing which stronger pages already mention the topic. Where the exact words are already on the source page, the link can be added once you approve it; otherwise you get a one-line suggestion to write yourself.

Questions

Google says links help it find pages and understand their relevance. Internal links will not rescue a weak page, but they help strong pages get found and understood, especially new pages and pages close to page one.

Should I use exact-match keywords in internal anchor text?

Use the words that best describe the target page, which will often include its main phrase. Vary them naturally. Google's guidance warns against stuffing keywords into anchor text.

They help, but contextual links inside body text carry more meaning because of the words around them. Use menus for your top pages and body links for everything else.

Add links every time you publish a new page, and review the whole site every three to six months, or after any redesign.

Sources

More guides