What Are Internal Links?
Internal links are hyperlinks that lead users to different pages connected the aforesaid website. They guideline users to related contented and thief hunt engines understand a site’s structure.
Here’s what an soul nexus looks for illustration connected a unrecorded page:

And a sample of the codification for that soul link:
<a href="https://www.example-site.com/">fixing crawlability issues</a>
Types of Internal Links
Different soul links service different purposes. Common types include:
- Navigational links: Appear successful main menus aliases sidebars
- Contextual links: Embedded wrong on-page text
- Image links: Hyperlinked images
- Footer links: Placed successful the site’s footer area
- Sidebar links: Located successful the sidebar for easy navigation
- Breadcrumb links: Show a page’s location wrong the tract hierarchy
- In-content call-to-action (CTA) links: Prompt conversions aliases actions wrong the text
Internal Links vs. External Links
Internal links direct users from 1 page of your tract to another. They amended navigation, walk nexus authority among your pages, and thief hunt engines crawl your site. These links support visitors wrong your domain, which tin summation personification engagement and conversion rates.
External links point from your tract to a page connected different domain. They thief you mention references and supply other context. They besides build spot and authority erstwhile you nexus to reputable sources. Getting outer backlinks from different websites tin amended your domain authority and rankings.
Here’s a speedy comparison table:
Feature | Internal Links | External Links |
Domain | Same domain | Different Domain |
Purpose | Navigation, personification engagement, SEO | Credibility, authority, referral traffic |
SEO Impact | Improves crawlability, distributes nexus equity | Boosts credibility, tin lead to backlinks |
Examples | Links wrong a blog aliases ecommerce site | Links to investigation articles aliases different websites |
Why Are Internal Links Important for SEO?
Internal links thief hunt engines find and scale each tract pages. They show really your pages subordinate to each other, which tells Google which pages are astir important. This distribution of nexus equity tin boost the visibility of little salient pages.
Users besides use from a clear way to much information, which increases the full clip they walk connected your site. Google sees longer personification engagement arsenic a affirmative ranking signal.
Let’s return a deeper look.
1. They Help Search Engines Understand Your Site’s Structure
By linking applicable pages together, you show really topics connect. Google’s crawlers observe caller pages by pursuing these links.
As Google explains: “Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them before. Other pages are discovered erstwhile Google follows a nexus from a known page to a caller page.”
Here’s a ocular practice of really this works:

2. They Pass Authority
Internal links walk PageRank from pages pinch tons of outer authority to different soul pages. A page that earns galore backlinks (and frankincense has higher authority) tin fortify different pages done soul links.
Let’s opportunity Page A has tons of outer links pointing to it, which intends it apt has much authority via PageRank. This authority tin past beryllium passed to Page C and different connected pages by measurement of soul links.
Like this:

Identifying these pages tin thief you make the astir of the authority coming into your tract to amended wide rankings.
However, support successful mind that only portion of that authority is passed, and contextual relevance matters—links are astir effective erstwhile they’re aligned pinch personification needs and contented topics.
3. They Help Users to Navigate Between Relevant Pages
Internal links promote visitors to research related pages. This keeps them connected your tract longer, increases the likelihood of conversions, and helps them find the nonstop accusation they need.
Let’s opportunity a personification lands connected an article connected your tract astir “how to build a PC.”
You tin see soul links to applicable merchandise pages pinch PC parts aliases to related contented for illustration an article astir “how to hole a PC fan.”
The extremity is to support users connected your tract truthful they complete your desired action, for illustration making a purchase, filling retired a form, aliases buying a product.
Showing users relevant, useful contented connected the correct pages is the cleanable measurement to do that.
How to Build Your Internal Linking Strategy
A clear strategy ensures you’re making the astir of each link.
In this adjacent section, we’ll item that seven-step process. And see a template to simplify your process.
1. Plan Your Site Structure
Site building is really your contented is organized and linked. Establish categories and a logical level to thief users and hunt engines move done your site.
A pyramid-like building often useful best:
- Top: Homepage aliases main pillar pages
- Middle: Subcategories aliases cluster pages
- Bottom: Specific contented pages
Like this:

2. Identify Pillar Pages
A pillar page is a broad assets that covers a wide topic. It links to much circumstantial pages (known arsenic cluster pages).
Pillar pages thief you build topic clusters, which are groups of related content. Creating pillar pages and taxable clusters besides helps tract architecture.

Pillar pages often target broad, high-volume keywords. Consider your pillar page the apical of the marketing funnel. It provides wide accusation and sparks interest.
For example, a unit tract mightiness person a pillar page for “washing machines.” That page would nexus to sub-pages astir circumstantial washing instrumentality types. It’s valuable because the keyword “washing machines” gets 18,100 searches per month.

Each conception covers a different type of washing instrumentality and past links to moreover much circumstantial merchandise categories. These merchandise categories whitethorn nexus retired to individual merchandise pages.

Avoid making pillar pages excessively narrow. You request capable cluster pages to support them.
3. Create Topic Clusters
Topic clusters grow connected your pillar taxable successful much detail. For example, if your pillar is “copywriting,” you mightiness person clusters connected “what is copywriting?” aliases “email copywriting tips.” Each cluster links backmost to the pillar page to reenforce topical relevance.
You tin besides create clusters wrong clusters. For instance, the “email copywriting” cluster mightiness see sub-pages astir taxable lines and calls-to-action (CTAs). These pages should nexus backmost to the main pillar page to show that it’s the superior assets connected the topic.
Start by mapping retired your taxable clusters and listing applicable supporting pages successful a spreadsheet. Like this:

For much in-depth instructions, cheque retired our Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research.
4. Use Authority Pages to Pass Link Equity
Your astir charismatic pages person high-quality backlinks from outer websites. Google views backlinks arsenic votes of confidence. A page pinch galore “votes” tin walk immoderate of that authority (or nexus equity) to different pages via soul links.
To do this effectively, place your astir charismatic pages utilizing Semrush's Backlink Analytics tool.
Enter your domain and click “Analyze.”

Click the “Indexed Pages” tab.

This study will show a database of your website pages, which are (by default) sorted by number of referring domains.

These are your astir powerful pages.
Export your results arsenic a .csv aliases .xlsx file. Paste astatine slightest 10 of your high-authority pages into your strategy doc.

Add soul links from these pages to little charismatic pages connected your site.
This process helps amended wide rankings by distributing authority to pages that request a boost.
5. Support New Content
A beardown soul linking building is captious erstwhile you person fewer aliases nary charismatic backlinks.
To start, take a caller portion of contented aliases a page that needs amended performance. Then, look for applicable interlinking opportunities.
Use Google’s “site:” search operator to find pages that mention your target keyword. For example, we mightiness hunt for “site:semrush.com soul links” to find related articles.

Collect each applicable pages from the hunt results.

Paste those URLs into your strategy document.

Add links from each of those pages to your caller document. Track your advancement arsenic you go.

This method helps you walk authority to your caller page.
6. Choose the Right Anchor Text
Anchor matter is the clickable matter successful a hyperlink. Like this:

You person afloat power complete anchor matter connected your ain site.
Use strategical words and phrases truthful users and hunt engines understand the linked page’s topic. Clear anchor matter helps Google spot really your pages connect.
SEO-friendly anchor matter is:
- Brief: Limit anchor matter to 5 words aliases fewer
- Relevant: Avoid vague, clickbait phrases for illustration “click here”
- Optimized: Exact-match anchor matter is acceptable for soul links if it’s relevant. The extremity is not to employment keyword stuffing techniques.
Be observant pinch outer links, manipulating outer anchor matter violates Google’s webmaster guidelines.
With champion practices successful mind, delegate anchor text to your pillar and cluster pages based connected keyword research.
7. Add Navigational and Contextual Links
Navigational links are among the astir important soul links because they look permanently successful your main menu. This main navigational building usually appears successful the apical paper aliases sidebar. And features merchandise categories, services, aliases halfway contented topics.
Like this:

Contextual links (or in-text links) look wrong the main assemblage contented of a page. Instead of pointing to a top-level navigational page, they guideline users to different related content.
For example, this astir page includes a nexus (“FossilMedia”) that points to a deeper, related page.

The links are often placed wrong descriptive anchor text (i.e. “FossilMedia”).
Adding some navigational and contextual links makes it easier for hunt engines and users to research your site. This helps them find what they request and tin amended personification acquisition and tract rankings.
Auditing Your Site’s Existing Internal Links
You astir apt already person immoderate soul links successful spot unless your website is wholly new. To create a beardown soul linking strategy, you must first understand your existent soul linking structure. An soul nexus audit tin help.
Use the Semrush Site Audit instrumentality to place communal soul linking issues and study really to hole them.
Let’s reappraisal the main issues you’ll apt encounter.
1. Broken Internal Links
Broken soul links nonstop users and hunt motor crawlers to pages that don’t exist. Deleted pages and mistyped URLs often origin these errors. This leads to 404 errors, which walk nary authority.
Find surgery links successful the “Errors” conception of your Internal Linking report. Then, region aliases switch each nexus pinch a valid nexus that points to a unrecorded page.

2. Too Many Internal Links
Having excessively galore links connected a page tin confuse Google’s crawlers. Hundreds aliases thousands of links besides make it difficult for users (and hunt engines) to spot which links matter.
Don’t cram links onto a page. Fewer, much targeted links typically supply a amended personification experience. The Site Audit instrumentality flags pages pinch excessive links successful the “Warnings” conception of your soul Linking report.

Identify those pages and region unneeded links.
3. Nofollow Attributes successful Internal Links
Nofollow links person the rel=“nofollow” attribute, which tells Google not to walk authority to the linked page. SEOs often usage nofollow for outer links they don’t want to endorse.
But you typically want soul links to walk SEO value.
Followed nexus (passes authority):
<a href="https://example.com">Anchor Text</a>
Nofollow nexus (doesn’t walk authority):
<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor Text</a>
Check your Internal Linking study for links pinch rel=”nofollow” nether the “Warnings” section.

Then, region the rel=“nofollow” property from immoderate soul links you want to walk authority.
4. Orphaned Pages
An orphaned page has nary links from different pages connected your site. Google discovers caller pages by pursuing links, truthful orphaned pages are difficult to find. If Google can’t find them, those pages won’t beryllium indexed aliases look successful hunt results.

Look for “Orphaned sitemap pages” nether the “Notices” conception of your Internal Linking report.

Then, nexus to each orphaned page from a page that’s already portion of your tract structure. Make judge the page you’re linking from isn’t orphaned, aliases the rumor will remain.
5. Pages pinch Only One Incoming Internal Link
Internal links awesome which pages are important. The much soul links a page has, the easier it is for hunt engines to observe and rank it. Pages pinch only 1 soul nexus are harder to find and whitethorn look little important to hunt engines.
Use the Site Audit instrumentality to find pages pinch only 1 soul link. Look for the “Pages pinch only 1 soul link” announcement successful your Internal Linking report.

Then, place applicable pages crossed your tract and adhd caller soul links to these underlinked pages.
6. Crawl Depth of More Than Three Clicks
Crawl extent is the number of clicks from your homepage to a circumstantial page. If users must click respective times, hunt engines whitethorn spot that page arsenic little important. According to Google, pages pinch less clicks often rank higher.
In the Site Audit’s Internal Linking report, look for “Page Crawl Depth much than 3 clicks.”

Then, create nonstop links to these deeper pages—ideally from pages only 1 click from your homepage. This alteration helps users and hunt engines find and scale those pages much easily.
7. Internal Redirects
Internal links that constituent to permanently redirected URLs tin trim crawl budget (the number of pages Google will crawl during a fixed clip frame). If different pages connected your tract still nexus to an aged URL, users will click that aged URL and get redirected. This other measurement is unnecessary.
Here’s what it looks like:

Internal redirects besides slow load times, which hurts personification acquisition and PageSpeed.
Update your soul links truthful that they lead straight to the caller page. To find soul redirects, unfastened the Site Audit instrumentality and spell to the “Crawled Pages” tab.

Search for your aged URL successful the hunt bar.

Click connected the URL successful the results, past click the “# URLs” nether “Incoming Internal Links.”

You’ll spot a database of pages that still nexus to your aged URL. Change those links truthful they constituent to the caller page alternatively of the old, redirected one.
Like this:

8. Redirect Chains & Loops
A redirect chain occurs erstwhile much than 1 redirect separates the original URL from the last URL. This often happens during tract migrations.
For example: URL A was /our-mission/. Later, it redirected to /about-us/ (URL B). Then, if you changed URL B to /about/ (URL C), you would create a concatenation of redirects. Instead of going straight to the last page, users walk done aggregate redirect steps.
Here’s what it looks like:

A redirect loop occurs erstwhile 2 (or more) pages redirect to each other, truthful the personification ne'er reaches a last page.
Like this:

In your Site Audit Issues report, look for “redirect chains and loops.”

You’ll spot a database of affected pages, positive the redirect type and really galore redirects are linked to each page.

Correct redirect chains by ensuring there’s only 1 redirect to the last URL.

Correct redirect loops by deleting aliases fixing the loop truthful that users and crawlers scope 1 last destination without bouncing back.
9. Links connected HTTPS Pages Lead to HTTP pages
Google recommends utilizing HTTPS for a unafraid site. After switching to HTTPS, you whitethorn still person immoderate links pointing to HTTP pages. This creates other redirects and tin trigger information warnings.
To quickly find this error, spell to your Site Audit study and click “View Details” nether the “HTTPS” section.

Then, scroll down to find the “X link(s) connected HTTPS pages leads to HTTP page” error. Click connected the number of links to spot which pages person the issue.

Then update those HTTP links to constituent to HTTPS pages instead.

Fix Internal Linking Issues pinch Site Audit
Even pinch a caller soul linking strategy, tally regular audits to drawback caller issues. Schedule a Site Audit each period and reappraisal the Internal Linking report. This helps you support a patient tract building and amended your SEO.
Be judge to tally your Site Audit each period aliases truthful and cheque the Internal Linking Report for issues. This is the champion measurement to support tabs connected your tract wellness and make improvements arsenic needed.