Internal links are one of the most underrated SEO superpowers, but many bloggers still overlook them. In this guide, I’ll explain what they are, why they’re essential for your blog’s SEO, and how to build internal links the right way – to help your blog rank higher and grow faster.
What are internal links?
Internal links are clickable connections between different pages on the same website.
For example, if you have a blog article about content writing tips, and in that article you link to another post on your site about SEO keywords – that’s an internal link. Readers just need to click on the link to be taken to the relevant page.
Here, the above text in red, “about SEO keywords”, contains an internal link to another relevant post on this website. The URL is https://samanthanorth.com/how-many-seo-keywords-should-i-use
When the reader clicks on the highlighted text, they will be taken to the other post.
Internal links allow readers to easily navigate between related content on your site. They’re also beneficial for search engines, helping them navigate and understand your content with greater ease and speed.
Why internal linking matters
#1. Helps search engines understand your blog
Search engines like Google are constantly crawling the web and analyzing sites to better understand the relationships between pages.
When the Googlebot sees internal links between your content, it helps Google’s algorithms categorize those connected pages as part of the same theme or topic.
When you link from one blog post to another related post, it’s like an endorsement showing how those two pages connect. It’s a signal that says “Hey, over here is another useful, relevant post on my site that people should check out!”
Internal links help Google understand what each page is about and how your site’s content works together. As a result, search engines can efficiently index all your important pages and get clearer signals about which ones deserve attention for relevant search queries.
#2. Improves user experience for your readers
One of the best ways to keep readers engaged on your site is to link your relevant blog posts together. When someone finishes an article, where they go next is super important.
Strategically placing internal links within your articles allows for a more natural flow for readers to access related content. You should aim to work internal links into the narrative organically and naturally.
For example, in a blog post on email newsletters you may say something like this:
“Speaking of building your list, one of the best lead magnets is an informational checklist or printable guide related to your niche. In fact, I have a popular post on creating high converting opt-in freebies that breaks down the process step-by-step with examples.”
Then in this paragraph, you’d include an internal link to your other post on creating email list freebies.
#3. Leads readers to your ‘money pages’
Every site has certain pages that drive way more leads and revenue compared to others. These are often called ‘money pages’ in the world of blogging and SEO.
For example, a detailed “Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research” post or your “Niche Site Starter Pack” opt-in offer may be some of your best converting pages. That’s why you should make them as visible as possible, in any relevant locations.
That’s where internal links come in really handy. Incorporating them helps raise ongoing awareness of your most profitable content – by directing engaged visitors straight from the posts they enjoy to your most valuable assets.
For example, if someone finds your post on “How to Start a Blog” useful, then they’re also likely to benefit from your paid blogging course or resources page with affiliate links.
#4. Passes ‘ranking power’ from one page to another
Google’s PageRank is a numeric score the algorithm uses to evaluate the relative importance of pages on a site. It’s essentially a reputation score that gets passed from page to page via links. The idea is that you can help PageRank to flow through your site with a solid internal linking structure.
When you link from one blog post to another internally, you pass some of that PageRank authority to the destination page. So over time, linking to a new post from several high-quality established articles gives a boost to that new content, lending it credibility.
You can think of it like endorsements in a professional network. A glowing recommendation from influential people gives the receiver more clout and trust. Similarly, Google sees internal links as reputational votes.
#5. Keeps your readers more engaged
Linking relevant posts together on your blog keeps your visitors exploring more content.
For example, if someone enjoys your article on social media tips, adding internal links to other popular posts like email newsletters or analytics guides will give them more great info to discover.
Internal linking helps to continue the conversation by connecting complementary blog posts thematically. Instead of an abrupt ending, readers can follow an intuitive path between interconnected articles based on their interests.
This creates a smooth, natural flow encouraging further site exploration. Visitors can then read your content as an expanding, interconnected narrative rather than disjointed individual pages.
The outcome is more engaged readers, higher pages per visit and more return traffic over time. This also boosts your time on page score, which in turn gives Google a positive signal to rank your blog higher.
#6. Improves your blog’s topical authority
When you create multiple blog posts around the same or related themes, it gives you the opportunity to build internal link between them. This helps build topical authority for your blog.
For example, publishing various blog posts on different subtopics within the broader topic of ‘content marketing’ establishes you as an expert in that space (as opposed to just publishing a single blog post on the topic).
Interconnecting these blog posts via contextual internal links tells search engines that those pages all reinforce one another and should be seen as a cohesive cluster on that broader subject.
This sends clear relevancy signals that your blog has depth and expertise not just on isolated pages, but surrounding the whole content marketing topic.
Internal links vs external links
As you may have already noticed, doing SEO as a blogger involves dealing with several different kinds of links. Let’s take a quick look at the various types of links and how they differ from one another.
- Internal links – links from one page of your website to another page of your website
- External links – links from your website to someone else’s website (e.g. to a source on statistics or a research paper to support a key point)
- Backlinks – links from someone else’s website to yours (also a kind of external link, but from a different perspective)
Anchor text – what it is and how to choose it
Anchor text simply means the visible, clickable text that forms a link on your site.
For example, if you write in your blog post “strategies for link building” and turn the words “link building” into an internal link, then “link building” would be the anchor text.
The anchor text offers the reader important clues to what the destination page is all about. Varied, natural-sounding phrases send clearer signals to search engines (and users) about the topic of linked content.
There are 8 main kinds of anchor text:
- Exact match – Anchor text that uses the exact target keyword or phrase you’re optimizing the target page for.
- Phrase match – Anchor text incorporating a common variation or close version of the target keyword.
- Partial match – Anchor text using just a subset or portion of the full keyword.
- Synonym or broad match – Anchor text containing a synonym, related term, or conceptually relevant word to the target phrase.
- Naked URL – The raw URL without any anchor text linked instead, displaying only the website address.
- Branded – Anchor text using your site/company/brand name
- Image or alt text – Anchor text assigned in the ALT attribute of linked images tags.
- Random or non-descriptive – Generic anchor text like “click here” or “this page” that provides little contextual value.
For internal linking, I recommend using contextual anchor texts as much as possible. It’s usually better to provide descriptive phrases that are relevant to the page you’re linking to.
So don’t use vague anchor text like “click here,” but instead use highly descriptive text like “content creation tips” or “email newsletter guides” to link to the relevant blog posts.
How to build internal links for SEO (My 8-step workflow)
I follow a specific workflow for internal link building, whether that’s for a brand new blog post, or for improving the rankings of an existing one. Here’s what that process looks like.
#1. Include internal links in every new blog post
Every time I publish a new blog post, I sprinkle internal links liberally throughout the text body.
I take an intentional approach to identifying evergreen posts that would make sense to link out to contextually. Typically, I look for pieces covering related subtopics or tangents where they fit organically.
For example, if I was writing a new post on email newsletters, then I might link out to guides on topics such as lead magnet creation and landing page design.
I try to stay aware of topical clusters and link within them, but I also don’t hesitate to link from one cluster to another, if I think it will be relevant for my readers.
#2. Link to every new blog post from existing content
As well as including internal links in new blog posts, it’s also important to make sure you link from existing content to your new blog post.
A post without any other posts linking to it is called an ‘orphaned post’. Orphaned posts are dead ends leading nowhere, which is bad news both for readers and search bots.
One easy way to quickly find relevant text within existing blog posts is to use the following in your browser (replacing my site URL with your own and the words within quote marks with your own terms): site:samanthanorth.com “starting a blog”
This returns every page on your site that contains the words within the quote marks – making it an easy way to quickly turn it up good candidates for adding internal links to your latest post.
#3. Use contextual anchor text with relevant keywords
As we already discussed, there are at least eight different kinds of anchor text available.
I keep it simple by always using contextually relevant anchor text, often including keywords relevant to the ones I want to rank the target post for. My top priority is relevancy for the reader, rather than stuffing my anchor texts with exact match keywords.
If an exact match keyword fits, that’s great. But if it doesn’t, it’s enough just to use an anchor text that’s relevant to the topic of the internally linked article that it points to. I usually avoid using naked URLs or random, non-descriptive anchor text.
#4. Focus on relevancy and a reader-first approach
As I already pointed out, my top priority is keeping internal links relevant for the reader.
My goal is to give them a smooth and logical journey around my site, providing them with the best next step after reading each blog post, plus any relevant resources along the way.
While I do focus on building my blog posts into topical clusters, I’m also willing to interlink between clusters if it makes sense for the reader (and it often does, because all the topics on my site are closely related).
#5. Build topical clusters for better EEAT
Creating topical clusters is a great way to organize your blog posts and boost your blog’s overall authority.
You normally start by writing a long form and super comprehensive post, often called a “pillar post”. A common example of this could be an “ultimate guide”. This kind of post aims to cover all aspects of a topic from A-to-Z (but in a high-level way). For example “The Ultimate 2024 Guide to Blogging”.
Then, you would create a series of what’s known as “cluster posts”, which take a much deeper dive into each important aspect of a pillar post topic.
Finally, you create internal links from the pillar post to each one of your cluster posts, and from each cluster post back to the pillar. Together, this approach creates a topical cluster.
#6. Use internal links to boost your high-converting ‘money’ pages
Another tip is to use internal links to increase “link juice” to your highest converting pages.
In this process, you would create as many internal links as possible (within other posts on your site), all pointing to these valuable pages.
I would especially focus on adding an internal link from the homepage to your high converting pages (if doing so makes sense for the reader). This is because your homepage typically attracts the highest number of external links (or backlinks), which means it has the highest level of ‘link juice’ on your blog.
Let’s say you give a quote to a news outlet or appear on a podcast. In those scenarios, it’s common for the journalist or podcast host to link to your homepage from the bio section. It’s less common for them to link to a specific post on your blog.
That’s why your homepage typically attracts the most external links and is therefore the most powerful page on your site.
#7. Use internal linking to boost old posts
On a regular basis, I like to visit my old posts and add more internal links pointing to them. This is a great way to improve the rankings of these old posts, and you’ll be surprised at how fast and effective it can be.
I’ve had blog posts jump from page two anonymity onto the front page – just from adding a handful of new internal links to them.
In fact, internal linking is one of the most powerful yet underrated SEO levers you have available in your toolkit. And the best part is, it’s totally under your control (unlike building backlinks). So don’t forget to use it to your advantage as much as you can!
#8. Keep an eye out for broken links
And finally, I regularly review my blog content keeping an eye open for any broken internal links.
This typically happens if I decide to delete a certain post, or change the URL pointing to it. If I find a broken link, I quickly replace it by pointing the anchor text to another relevant post on my site.
Alternatively, I might just delete it altogether by removing the anchor text from within the corresponding paragraph in the blog post. Obviously, I edit the overall text to ensure it still makes sense after deleting anything.
LinkWhisper is a useful tool for keeping track of all your internal links, including monitoring for any broken ones and suggesting opportunities for adding new ones. Another handy (free) tool just for finding broken links is Broken Link Checker.
Get started with internal linking
If you don’t have an internal linking strategy yet, then I recommend starting small. Go back and add 2-3 relevant internal links within 5 of your best performing blog posts. Make sure the anchor text is descriptive and fits the surrounding context.
Then, create links from those 5 posts to 2 other complementary evergreen posts on your site. Focus on interconnecting content around one broader theme to start building your first topical cluster.
Once you get comfortable with manual internal links, try a tool like Link Whisper to streamline the process of finding internal linking opportunities. Those suggestions coupled with your semantic knowledge of what content pairs well together makes scaling internal links much easier.
As creating relevant internal links becomes second nature in your content process, you’ll reap the benefits in terms of better reader engagement and improved rankings in search.
But you have to start somewhere, so begin by judiciously upgrading a handful of posts with contextual internal links today.
