An internal link is a hyperlink pointing to a page within the same domain. Internal linking is crucially important for both website rankings and usability:
- Internal links allow users to conveniently navigate around the website (i.e. in order to complete a purchase, learn more about a product or read about your business)
- Internal links allows crawlers discover more of your site pages, even those that have no external backlinks (especially important ones)
- Internal links are thought* to improve each given page authority (Google puts some emphasis on the signal: The more internal links a page has, the more internal authority it is supposed to have).
*This has never been officially confirmed by Google (unless I missed the announcement) but we’ve seen web pages doing considerably better once we add internal in-links pointing to it, so let’s say this one is an educated theories backed by multiple experiments.
Now, the question is however how to use internal links correctly. Let’s see…
1. Internal Linking Basics and Best Practices
I won’t repeat what Rand said in this Whiteboard Friday video[1] because I agree with most (all?) points. But let me recap:
- Well-structured navigation is crucial both for user experience and crawling… however
- In-content internal links (links embedded within meaningful context) seem to carry more weight for rankings
- Google is believed to give the least importance to footer links
- Internal anchor text does matter. This has almost been confirmed[2] by a Googler. That said, if you target specific queries for a specific page, use descriptive keyword-focused (but meaningful) keyword links when linking to that page (when that makes sense). However stay away from always using exact-match anchor text, as it may