---
title: "Internal linking"
url: https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/internal-linking
type: Page
---

# Internal linking

Internal linking explained: why Google needs links to find and understand pages, what makes a crawlable link with good anchor text and how to fix yours.

SEO glossary

## Internal linking

Internal linking is the practice of linking from one page on a website to another page on the same site. Internal links help visitors move between related content and help search engines discover pages, understand what each one is about from its anchor text and see which pages matter most.

## Why internal links matter for SEO

Google uses links as a signal of relevance and to find new pages to crawl. Its documentation says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. A page with no internal links, often called an orphan page, may only be found through a sitemap and receives nothing from the pages around it.

Internal links are also the one kind of link a site controls completely, so they decide where visitors and attention flow from pages that already attract both.

## What makes a good internal link?

Google can generally only crawl a link if it is an a element with an href attribute. Links that rely on onclick handlers or span elements may not be followed. Anchor text should be descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both pages, and Google singles out phrases such as click here as unhelpful. It says there's no magical ideal number of links on a page, but if it looks like too many, it probably is.

## How to improve internal linking

- Link from well-linked, high-traffic pages to the pages you want to rank
- Link related articles to each other in the body text, not only in menus
- Use anchor text that describes the target page in natural words
- Find orphan pages by comparing a site crawl with the XML sitemap
- Update internal links that point to redirects or 404 pages

## Example

A law firm's guide to contesting a will attracts links from news sites but never links to the firm's will disputes service page. Adding a sentence to the guide that links to the service page with the anchor text 'will dispute solicitors' sends readers, and some of the guide's authority, to the page the firm most wants to rank.

## Related terms

- [Topical authority](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/topical-authority)
- [Crawl budget](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/crawl-budget)
- [Anchor text](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/anchor-text)
- [Technical SEO](https://marketingsignals.com/glossary/technical-seo)

## Further reading

- [Law Firm SEO: What Actually Works in 2026](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/law-firm-seo-what-actually-works-in-2027)
- [How to Write Content for SEO That Converts and Ranks](https://marketingsignals.com/insights/how-to-write-content-for-seo-that-converts-and-ranks)

Our [Organic Search](https://marketingsignals.com/service/organic-search) service puts this into practice for brands in the UK and US.

## Sources

- [Link best practices for Google, Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable)

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