Internal links sometimes get left out of the conversation. They’re often not perceived as an integral part of new content generation, but they’re also not created by external link building efforts.

That means internal page links sometimes get missed. And that makes them worth a second look, as a way to give your SEO campaigns the edge over those of your rivals.

In this guide, we’ll look at what defines an internal link and why they are so important to the overall success of your SEO efforts. We’ll also explore some best practices, tips and tricks to optimise internal link structure for the best results in search engines and AI systems.

What are internal links?

An internal link is just what it says on the tin – a hyperlink on your website that takes the user to another page on the same site. They’re used, from a user experience perspective, to guide users through the buying journey and to provide them with further information. But they’re much more than just that.

Internal links serve several vital purposes, including:

  • Improving navigation around your website
  • Linking back to your homepage
  • Moving users to the next step in their journey
  • Converting users through ‘Add to basket’ and ‘Checkout’ links on eCommerce sites
  • Adding value by showing your depth of content and relevance for related subjects
  • Linking to related pages and downloadable resources to allow users to continue their journey when they otherwise might leave.

There are many reasons why you might link internally to another web page or a locally hosted multimedia resource purely for content-driven purposes.

However, it’s important to recognise that internal links do more than just enhance your content. They also add connectivity between different pages on your website. Strong, considered internal linking practices direct search traffic and page authority value to the most important pages on your site, as well as showing them the relationships that exist between pages.

As a result, internal links can help your SEO campaigns in several different ways:

  • Make your page hierarchy obvious to search engines for faster crawling and indexing.
  • Pass page authority value to pages you want to elevate in the search results.
  • Funnel human visitors towards pages where they can place an order, contact you, or achieve some other defined marketing goal.

What’s clear is that internal links are more than just navigational tools.

Understanding audiences for internal links

There are three different audiences for your internal links, and you need to develop a linking strategy that caters to all of these at once.

The first audience consists of search engine crawlers. These robots discover new pages on your site by following hyperlinks from existing pages, learning how they’re linked and related. That’s why a strong internal linking structure remains essential for indexation.

The second audience is human visitors. Arguably these are more important than crawl bots. But it’s not that simple. You need to cater to both at once. Humans see the rendered version of your page, not the HTML code, so links must be clearly visible, contextual, and genuinely useful.

More recently, a new third audience has emerged — AI-driven search. Now, around 37% of online users lean on AI platforms as a primary resource for search queries. That’s no small amount, so SEOs need to tailor their strategy to meet the demand, including their internal linking.

Internal links help reinforce topical relationships between pages, provide contextual signals about content themes, and also support AI’s understanding of your website as a whole, which can aid you in getting your content surfaced in AI-centric results. In other words, internal linking isn’t just about crawl paths — it’s about meaning.

Why internal links matter

We know search engine robots crawl the web by following hyperlinks from one page to the next. As a result, the more links there are pointing to a page make it more likely to be found.

But internal linking today is about more than discovery — it’s about helping search engines and LLMs understand how your content connects and which pages matter most.

Internal links give you close control over key elements such as anchor text, context, link placement, and the rel=”nofollow” attribute. These signals influence how authority is passed and how pages are interpreted in relation to specific topics and keywords.

These links also play a crucial role for users. They help visitors navigate your site, discover relevant content and move naturally through their journey, increasing engagement and supporting conversions.

There’s also a growing role in how AI-driven search systems interpret your site. By linking related content, you reinforce topical relationships and help build a clearer picture of your expertise.

How internal links transmit SEO value

Every page that is crawled and indexed by search engines is given a score based on its perceived authority.
When you link from one page to another, you pass some of that value along.

By linking from pages with a high authority score to other pages on your own website, you keep that value within your own page hierarchy.

While the concept of “link equity” still applies, modern SEO places more emphasis on:

  • Relevance between pages
  • Topical clustering
  • Contextual signals.

Internal linking is no longer just about passing authority — it’s about reinforcing meaning and intent.

How to develop your internal linking strategy

If SEO and visibility is at the heart of your digital strategy, internal linking should be one of your primary tools. But how do you do it?

Developing an effective internal linking strategy looks something like this:

  1. List your sitemap with pages separated into nested ‘tiers’ according to their importance.
  2. Prioritise your most valuable content and link to it from prominent but relevant positions (don’t spam links).
  3. Include ‘contextual links’ in your page content.
  4. Add breadcrumbs that link pages to their parent categories, showing both users and bots how pages are hierarchically linked.
  5. Use category tags, archives and related content to connect pages.

Of course, internal linking should mirror how users move through your funnel as well as your sitemap. Every journey will be different, but they may look a little something like:

  • Blog → guide → service page
  • Guide → related guides → tools/resources
  • Category → product → supporting content.

What is the perfect internal link structure?

Imagine your website hierarchy like a Christmas tree. Your most valuable, authoritative content is the star on the top of the tree.
As you move down the tree, each tier broadens out to encompass more pages, each of slightly less importance than the one above.

This analogy still works — but modern SEO adds another layer:

  • Pages within the same topic cluster should also link laterally
  • Related content should reinforce each other semantically.

This helps search engines better understand how your content fits together.

How to link effectively using optimised hyperlink anchor text

Linking to the right place is important. But how you do it is also important to understand. The highlighted words that people click on to visit the next internal link is known as anchor text, and it’s vital you get this right.

Strong anchor text should be clear and obvious, giving the user a non-ambiguous signpost of where they’re going and what type of content they will find if they click. It should also be well optimised for SEO.

Why descriptive anchor text matters

Anchor text isn’t just a keyword signal — it’s a contextual signal.

This is obviously beneficial to human visitors, who want to know what they are clicking on, but it also helps search engines and AI systems understand:

  • The topic of the destination page
  • The relationship between pages
  • The intent behind the link.

Anchor text should be as natural-looking as possible. Make sure it is grammatically correct in its wider context on the page:

  • Use descriptive phrases rather than generic terms
  • Match the intent of the destination page
  • Keep it concise but meaningful
  • Vary phrasing naturally across your site.

For example:

  • Weak: “click here”
  • Strong: “internal linking strategy for SEO”

If you’re desperate to use an anchor phrase that’s difficult to work into a sentence, consider placing it in a bullet point or image caption. However, make sure you avoid excessively repeating anchors, forcing unnatural keywords, or adding links where they don’t add value. Balance and readability should always come first.

Thoughtful internal linking

You want people to follow genuinely helpful and useful journeys through your website. So your internal linking should be natural and never feel forced. Focus on relevance, user intent, and the funnel stage to consider what you should link to and when.

For example:

  • Informational content should link to deeper guides
  • Guides should link to conversion-focused pages
  • High-authority pages should support priority URLs.

Poor internal linking can take many forms, including:

  • Looking spammy, with too many links close together
  • Irrelevant linking to pages that don’t represent a logical next step
  • Stuffing for SEO purposes
  • Not removing or updating dead links and out of date content.

As with most things in SEO, the general rule is that if a link doesn’t help the user, it probably shouldn’t be there.

How to audit for internal linking issues

Like many other SEO practices, regular audits and updates of your internal linking strategy are vital. It helps ensure everything is still working as intended and gives you a list of things to improve and build on.

Audits will allow you to spot quick fixes like broken links or orphan pages that you can address fairly quickly. Platforms like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb are great for crawling your website to identify pages without inbound links, broken links, redirect chains, and more.

Broken links risk your visitors landing on a 404 error page. Worse still, they are a dead-end for search robots. To fix them, you can redirect URLs, update existing links, and reconnect orphan pages, improving both UX and SEO. If you’ve moved a page and want to automatically redirect internal links to its new URL, a 301 redirect code can achieve this while still passing the full amount of authority to the new destination page.

Measuring the effectiveness of internal linking

Tracking the performance of your internal links is essential to understanding their impact. Rather than treating internal linking as a one-off task, it should be something you review and refine over time.

Look at how linked pages perform in search, including changes in organic traffic, keyword rankings and indexation. User behaviour is just as important — metrics like pages per session, navigation paths and conversion journeys can indicate whether your links are successfully guiding users through your site.

When your strategy is working, key pages will gain visibility, supported by related content, and users will naturally explore further. If it’s not, you may see orphan pages persist, important pages receive little internal traffic, or users dropping off without continuing their journey.

Ultimately, internal linking should be treated as an ongoing optimisation process to ensure it continues to support both users and search engines effectively.

Best practice for internal links

There’s an old UX saying that goes “no important page should be more than three clicks away from your homepage”. This still holds true and is a simple but effective way to think about internal link structure. The closer a page is to your homepage, the more likely it is to be found, as well as crawled frequently and to receive authority from across your site.

Your definition of ‘important’ can include pages that contain your most valuable SEO keywords, achieve high conversion rates, or bring in substantial revenues. These are the pages that should sit closest to the top of your structure and be supported by strong internal linking from relevant content.

Failing to link effectively to these pages means missing out on key benefits. Without sufficient internal links, search engines may struggle to crawl and prioritise them, limiting their ability to rank. At the same time, you risk losing valuable authority flow across your site and missing opportunities to guide users towards high-value pages.

Dealing with orphan pages can be another quick win here. If a page has no internal links pointing to it, it becomes much harder for both users and search engines to discover it. Identifying and reconnecting these pages is often one of the simplest ways to improve your internal linking strategy.

Internal linking tips and tricks

Let’s close out with a few more tips and tricks for an internal linking strategy that really works.

Dos

  • Do make sure every link has a valid destination and every page has at least one inbound link
  • Do add alt text (and title text, where appropriate) for accessibility and improved SEO.
  • Do use relevant and varied anchor text.

Don’ts

  • Don’t use an excessive number of links. Links should feel natural when placed, so a few good links are worth just as much as a large number of weak links.
  • Don’t try to hide links by formatting them the same as the body text – Google have considered this a major no-no for many years already.
  • Don’t link between unrelated pages. You should only pass authority value to a page that contains genuinely relevant related content, for maximum benefit.

Internal links can be optimised relatively easily once you know how to define and deploy an effective strategy. But they’re also among the most powerful optimisation tactics.

Instead of seeing your internal linking strategy as an obstacle, view it as a tool that helps you guide users, support search engines, build topical authority, and strengthen your overall SEO performance.

Need help with your internal linking strategy? Our talented teams of technical SEO and content specialists can take a deep dive into your current structure and help you take it to the next level. Reach out today to find out how SALT.agency can help.