Internal Links for SEO: An Actionable Guide

Internal links are to backlinks what Robin is to Batman—they’re crucial to SEO success yet receive little to none of the credit.

In this guide, I’ll explain what internal links are, how to set up an internal linking structure, and how to strategically use them inSEO.

Internal links take visitors from one page to another on your website. Their main purpose is to help visitors easily navigate your website, but they can also help boostSEO.

Here’s a simplified view of what an internal link lookslike:

And here’s what an internal link looks like in HTMLcode:

<a href="https://example.com/">Internal Linking</a>

Internal links serve a practical purpose of getting your website’s visitors from A to B, but they have an important role when utilized forSEO.

When asked in a “Google SEO office-hours” video whether internal linking was still important for SEO, John Mueller said:

Yes, absolutely… Internal linking is super critical for SEO. It’s one of the biggest things you can do on a website to guide Google and visitors to the pages that you think are important… What you think is important is totally up toyou.

So if internal links are used strategically in SEO, they can help boost the performance of the pages you’re linking to.

Internal links do this by directing the flow of PageRank around your site. Even though the PageRank toolbar disappeared in 2016, PageRank is still a signal that Google...