How Internal Linking Helps Your SEO

What Is Internal Linking?

An internal link is any link on your website that points to another page on the same website. If you write a blog post about "best coffee shops" and you click a word that sends you to a different page on your own site about "how to make cold brew" — that's an internal link.

Think of your website like a city. Google is a delivery truck trying to visit every house. If the streets are well-connected, the truck can reach every house quickly. If the streets are a tangled mess with no signs, some houses never get visited. Internal links are those streets and signs — they help Google find and index all your pages.

Every page on your site has a certain amount of "authority" — like a reputation score. When one page links to another, it passes some of that authority along. Pages with lots of quality links pointing to them are seen as important by Google. Internal linking lets you share that authority with the pages that need it most.

Why This Matters for Your Website

Most website owners focus on getting links from other websites (called backlinks). That's great — but internal links are free and fully in your control. You can start using them right now without asking anyone for permission.

Internal links do three big things for your site. First, they help Google understand what your site is about. When your "About" page links to your "Services" page using the right words, Google gets a signal about what that page is for. Second, they spread authority around so that even pages with no external backlinks can rank. Third, they keep visitors on your site longer — when there's a helpful link, people click it and stay longer.

How to Use Internal Links Well

Good internal linking isn't random — it follows a simple logic. Here's how to do it:

1. Link using descriptive words. Don't make link text that just says "click here." Instead, use words that describe the page you're linking to — like "learn how to make cold brew" or "see our pricing plans." Google uses these words as a clue about what the destination page is about.
2. Put links in relevant content. The best time to add an internal link is when you're talking about something related to another page on your site. If you're writing about photography tips and you have an article about camera lenses, that's the perfect place to link.
3. Share authority from strong pages to weaker ones. Your homepage or most popular blog post probably has the most links pointing to it. Link from those strong pages to ones that are newer or harder to find — that borrowed authority helps the weaker page rank.
4. Keep your site organized in clusters. Group related pages together. If you have 10 articles all about coffee, they should link to each other. That tells Google these pages belong together and are all worth crawling.

An Internal Link in HTML

Here's what an internal link looks like in the raw code of a webpage. This is the HTML that makes clickable words on a page:

<p>If you want to improve your site, you should
learn how to write good <a href="/blog/seo-basics">
SEO-friendly content</a> that ranks well on Google.</p>

The words "SEO-friendly content" are clickable. When a visitor clicks them, they go to the page at /blog/seo-basics. Notice the link text — "SEO-friendly content" — clearly describes the destination page. That's exactly what you want.

Now here's a bad example — one you should avoid:

<p>Click <a href="/blog/seo-basics">here</a>
to learn more about SEO.</p>

Using "here" as link text gives Google no useful information about the destination page. Always use descriptive words instead.

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