Internal LinkingSpending the authority you already have

Why internal links are the most underrated lever#

External links are hard to earn and slow to arrive. Internal links are entirely under your control and can be changed this afternoon. They do three jobs at once: they help crawlers discover pages, they tell search engines how pages relate to each other, and they distribute the authority your site has earned from outside towards the pages you choose.

Most sites waste this. Navigation and footers send the bulk of internal links to pages like 'about' and 'contact', old blog posts that happen to rank keep their authority to themselves, and the commercial pages that matter most sit four or five clicks deep with a handful of links. An internal linking strategy is simply deciding where your authority should go, and then sending it there.

Every site has more authority than it uses; internal links are how you spend it.

The principles#

• Priority pages get the most and best links. Links from strong, relevant pages, placed in body content, carry most weight.
• Links follow meaning. Link where a reader would genuinely want to go next, not wherever a keyword happens to appear.
• Anchor text describes the destination. 'Our guide to search intent' tells reader and crawler what to expect; 'click here' tells neither.
• Depth stays shallow for important pages. Priority pages should be reachable in a few clicks from the home page.
• Every indexable page has at least one link in. Orphan pages are hard to discover and signal low importance.

Structure: hubs and spokes#

The most reliable structure for content-rich sites is the hub-and-spoke model, also known as topic clusters. A hub page gives a broad overview of a topic and links to every detailed page in that topic. Each detailed page links back to the hub and to closely related siblings.

This does two things. It makes topical relationships explicit, so search engines see a coherent body of expertise rather than scattered articles. And it pools authority: links earned by any page in the cluster flow through the hub to the others.

Finding where your authority sits#

Start with data. Your link analysis tool shows which pages earn external links; your analytics and Search Console show which pages already attract visits and impressions. These pages are your donors. Commonly, they are old blog posts, research pieces or tools that earned attention years ago.

Then list your recipients: the commercial or strategic pages you need to rank. The plan is to add relevant, contextual links from donors to recipients. A popular guide on choosing equipment, for example, should link prominently to the category or service page that sells that equipment.

Placement and anchor text#

Not all links on a page are equal. A link placed in the main body copy, in context, is a clear editorial signal. Links in boilerplate navigation and footers help discovery but are repeated on every page and carry less meaning. Prioritise contextual links for the relationships that matter most.

Write anchor text the way you would describe the page to a colleague. Vary it naturally: 'our checklist for site migrations', 'how to plan a migration', 'the migration guide'. Identical exact-match anchors on every link look mechanical and give readers less information.

How many internal links is right?#

There is no magic number. Search engines can process many links on a page, but each additional link shares the page's attention with the others, and readers cannot follow fifty suggestions. A sensible rule is to link wherever a reader would genuinely benefit, and to make sure each important page receives links from several relevant pages.

On long guides, three to six well-chosen contextual links is often enough. On hub pages, linking to every page in the cluster is the point. On product and category pages, links to parent categories, related categories and complementary items do most of the work.

Common problems and their fixes#

Internal links during redesigns and migrations#

Redesigns are where internal linking strategies are most often destroyed without anyone noticing. A new navigation with fewer items, a new template that drops related-content modules, or body copy rewritten without its links can strip priority pages of most of their internal support overnight.

Before any redesign, export the internal link counts for priority pages and agree that the new design must preserve or improve them. Check the staging site with a crawl before launch. This one comparison catches a class of problems that otherwise appears months later as an unexplained decline. The full process is in website migration SEO.

The same applies to smaller changes, such as replacing a mega-menu with a simpler one or collapsing footer links. Each may be sensible for users; each changes how authority flows. Make the trade-off consciously rather than discovering it in next quarter's report.

Making it part of publishing#

Internal linking decays unless it is built into the publishing process. Every new page should go live with links pointing in from at least two or three relevant existing pages, and links out to its hub and siblings. Without the inbound step, new pages become orphans by default.

When pages are merged or removed, update internal links to point directly to the new destination rather than relying on redirects. It keeps crawling efficient and signals clean. The same discipline matters during content pruning.

Published by Fabulous.Media, a network of specialist marketing agencies. Updated 9 October 2026. Platform features change often; check current official documentation before acting on platform-specific detail.