Internal linking is when you link one page of your site to another page that is also on your site. These links are different from backlinks, which are external links that lead back to your own website.
The most common example of internal linking is a site menu. Think about your own website. You may have a dropdown menu that leads users to your Home page, About page, Product page, or Contact page when they click on the proper text. Those are all internal links. Links within your content (say, a blog post) are also known as contextual links. The word “backlinks” in the first paragraph of this section is a great example of a contextual link!
Internal linking has a couple of obvious benefits. Navigation of your site is made much easier when you add links to other pages, and contextual links provide users with the opportunity to seek out additional information on a topic they may be interested in. However, internal linking is also an important part of a healthy SEO strategy. Here’s why.
Search engines like Google use internal links to understand the context of the pages on a site. Linking two pages together helps the search engine to understand that there is a connection between them.
Search engines aren’t the only ones trying to understand the context of your pages. Internal links also help users to understand more about your business. From a product page, for instance, you can link to product sourcing details, your company’s history, or related items to help users get a better sense of what you sell or your company values. Visitors will have a better experience and will be more likely to convert.
If you have a page with high authority on Google, you can use that to bolster the rankings of other pages with internal links. Say your website’s home page has high authority due to its higher number of backlinks. All the pages internally linked on that page will share some of that authority.
If you want to bolster your internal linking efforts to improve SEO, you’ll need to map out your ideal site structure. As a rule of thumb, users should be able to navigate to most (if not all) of the pages on your site in three clicks or less.
Picture a spider web, with your home page at the center. Connected to this center page are larger category pages (“About”, “Products”, etc.). And connected to those are even more specific subcategory pages. This is the first step in making sure that you are internally linking all of your pages at least once.
Now, pick out your most authoritative pages, or the ones that have the most high-quality backlinks. These are the next priority. Find opportunities to add internal links to these high-authority pages. This will allow them to pass authority to the pages being linked.
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