SEO
Internal Linking Guide
Internal links are the paths through your site. They tell readers where to go next, and they tell search engines which pages matter and how they relate. A site without them is a pile of pages; a site with them is a publication.
What an internal link does
An internal link does two jobs at once, and both matter. For the reader, it is the next step: the guide that follows from the page they are reading, the detail behind the claim they just read, the tool that applies the method they just learned. For the search engine, it is a statement of relationship: this page is about that topic, this page is important enough to be linked from here, this group of pages belongs together. A search engine discovers your pages by following links, and it judges their importance partly by how many links they receive and from where. A page no other page links to is an orphan — hard to find, hard to rank, and invisible to the reader who would have wanted it most.
The rule this site follows is simple: every page is linked from at least three pages, and every page links to at least three pages. The rule is not a ritual; it is the minimum for a site whose pages are meant to be found. A page that satisfies the rule is a page a reader can reach by following the subject, and a page a search engine can reach by following the links.
Anchor text: describe the destination
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link, and it is the link’s most important property after the destination. Good anchor text describes the destination in the reader’s words: “the commission models guide”, “keyword research fundamentals”, “the disclosure requirements guide”. The reader knows where the link goes before clicking, and the search engine learns what the destination is about. Bad anchor text is generic — “click here”, “read more”, “this article” — which tells the reader nothing and the search engine nothing. And anchor text that repeats the same keyword in every link to a page is mechanical: a handful of natural variations is better than a hundred identical ones, because the natural variations are what real writing looks like.
The test for anchor text is to read the sentence with the link removed. If the sentence still makes sense and the link’s words still describe the destination, the anchor text is right. If the sentence collapses, or the link’s words could describe any page, rewrite it. Links belong in sentences where they help: where the reader has just formed a question that the linked page answers, or where a claim needs the evidence the linked page holds.
Where to place links in a page
Links work best where the reader’s question arises. A link in the body, inside a sentence that raises the question, is the most useful kind — it catches the reader at the moment of curiosity. The related-articles block at the bottom of a page is the second kind: it offers the next step to a reader who has finished, and on this site it carries up to six links to pages in the same cluster. The hub page is the third kind: it lists the cluster’s pages so a reader arriving at the topic can see the whole map. All three kinds are needed; none replaces the others. A page with only a related block and no body links is a page whose links arrive too late — the reader who needed the detail in paragraph three has already left.
One placement to avoid: the navigation-like link dumped in a list at the top of a page with no context. It tells the reader nothing about why they should click, and it is the kind of linking that looks mechanical to a search engine. Context is the difference between a link and a list.
Linking the cluster: hub, spokes and bridges
The cluster is the natural unit of internal linking, and the pattern is described in our topic cluster guide. The pillar links to every spoke. Every spoke links to the pillar and to the spokes it naturally follows. A spoke links to a spoke in another cluster only when the reader’s journey genuinely crosses — with a bridge link, such as the affiliate guides linking to the SEO guides for the method, and the SEO guides linking back to the affiliate guides for the application. Bridges are valuable because they carry the reader across the site; they are also the links most often added carelessly, so each bridge should answer a real question the reader has just formed. A link from an affiliate page to a blogging page that the reader has no reason to want is not a bridge; it is noise.
The same discipline applies to the homepage. The homepage links to every hub, and through the hubs to every page, which keeps the site’s click depth at two or three from the home page. A page that is five clicks from the homepage is a page that is effectively hidden — from readers and from search engines alike.
How many links, and how often to add them
There is no magic number of links per page. The right number is the number of real questions the page raises that another page answers. On a thorough page that is usually a handful in the body plus the related block. Fewer than that, and the reader is left stranded. Many more, and the page becomes a directory instead of an article — every sentence an exit, no sentence worth staying for. The test is to read the page as a reader: are the links the ones you would want, at the moments you would want them? If a link feels forced, remove it. If a question goes unanswered by any link, add one.
New pages need links from old pages too. When you publish a new page, go back to the existing pages that mention its subject and link to it from the sentence where it belongs. A new page with no incoming links is an orphan on the day it is born, and it will take far longer to be found. This is the maintenance work of internal linking: every new page means a small pass over the pages it relates to.
Links to pages that do not exist yet
Never link to a page that does not exist. A link that leads nowhere is a broken promise to the reader and a broken signal to the search engine. During this site’s build, pages were linked only once they existed — the hubs listed planned guides as plain text until the guides were live, and only then were the lists replaced with links. The discipline is worth keeping: a link is a promise that the destination exists, and the promise should be kept. The same applies in reverse: when a page is removed or its address changes, every link to it must be updated or removed at the same time.
Checking your internal links
Internal linking should be checked regularly, not once. A simple audit answers four questions. Which pages have no incoming links — the orphans? Which pages have only one or two? Which pages link to nothing? And which links point to pages that no longer exist? The answers are easy to find with a site crawl or by searching the site’s own source, and fixing them is usually a matter of adding a sentence with a link in the right place. Run the audit whenever a batch of pages is published, and again after any page is moved or removed. A site’s link graph is a living thing: it decays whenever a page is added or changed without the links being updated with it.
Last checked: 14 November 2026.