Internal Link
An internal link is a link from one page on a website to another page on the same website.
Internal links help people navigate the site and help crawlers discover and understand relationships between pages.
What It Means in Practice
Internal links include things such as:
- Main navigation
- Footer navigation
- Breadcrumbs
- Related articles
- Contextual links inside body content
- Category and collection links
- Calls to action
Not every internal link serves the same purpose.
A contextual link inside relevant content can communicate a much more specific relationship than a generic footer link appearing on every page.
How It Works
Crawlers follow links to discover URLs.
The destination URL and anchor text also provide context about what the linked page contains and how it relates to the current page.
This makes internal linking useful for both crawlability and information architecture.
Semantic HTML and normal crawlable <a href> links provide a dependable foundation.
Why It Matters
Internal linking helps establish which pages are connected and which content is important.
It can also prevent useful pages from becoming orphan pages.
For users, good internal links provide the next useful piece of information without requiring them to return to navigation or search.
Common Problems
Common internal-linking issues include:
- Important pages receiving very few links
- Broken links leading to 404 errors
- Linking through unnecessary redirects
- Repetitive generic anchor text
- Large numbers of unrelated links
- Important URLs available only through scripts or controls that are difficult to crawl
- New content published without being linked from existing related pages
How to Improve
Link where the relationship genuinely helps the reader.
Use descriptive anchor text that explains what the destination offers.
Periodically crawl the site to find broken links, redirected links, weakly linked pages, and orphan pages.