Internal Linking

Internal links are the roads inside your website. They help visitors move around and help Google find and weigh your pages. This entry names the link types and the audit numbers you will see in crawling tools.

Internal link vs backlink

An internal link points from one page on your domain to another page on the same domain. A backlink comes from a different website. You control internal links fully. Backlinks depend on other people.

That control is the big advantage. You can add an internal link today, for free, with no outreach.

Types of internal links

• Navigation links: menus, headers, and footers. They appear on most pages.
• Contextual links: links inside your article text. They carry the most meaning because of the words around them.
• Breadcrumbs: the “Home > Services > Aircon Cleaning” trail. They show where a page sits in your site architecture.
• Related links: “You might also like” blocks at the end of a post.

Google says every important page needs a link from at least one other page on your site. It also says there is no magic number of links per page.

Audit metrics you will meet

Crawling tools such as Screaming Frog report two numbers often:

• Click depth: how many clicks a page sits from the homepage. Important pages should be close, ideally within three clicks.
• Orphan page: a page with no internal links pointing to it. Google may struggle to find it.

You will also see the phrase “link equity.” It is an industry term for the value a link may pass. Google does not publish a link equity score, so treat it as a concept.

One edge case: links must use a real <a href> element for Google to follow them reliably. Buttons that only work with JavaScript clicks may not count. Also, linking to a URL that redirects wastes a hop. Point links at the final URL.

Example

An Iloilo furniture shop has a page for narra dining sets priced at ₱45,000. A crawl shows it is an orphan page with zero internal links. The owner adds contextual links from the blog post “How to care for wooden furniture.” The page now sits two clicks from home.

For hands-on practice planning links on your own site, open the linked lesson.