Internal Linking Basics for a Small Business Site
Guide · SEO Tools
Internal linking — links from one page on your own site to another — gets far less attention than backlinks or keyword research, but it's one of the few SEO levers you have complete, direct control over, with no dependency on anyone else linking to you.
It helps search engines find and understand your pages
A page with no internal links pointing to it is harder for a crawler to discover, especially if it's not in your main navigation and isn't in your sitemap either. Linking to it from relevant related content gives crawlers another path to find it and signals what it's about through the link's surrounding context and anchor text.
It keeps visitors on your site longer
A visitor who reads one blog post and then clicks through to a related tool or another relevant article stays engaged with your site longer than one who reads a single page and leaves — and that engagement, along with the reduced likelihood of an immediate bounce back to search results, is a positive signal in its own right.
Use descriptive anchor text, not just "click here"
Anchor text (the clickable link text itself) that describes what the linked page is about — "how to compress a PDF for email" rather than "click here" — gives both users and search engines more context about the destination page's topic than generic link text does.
Link from high-traffic pages to pages that need help
Your most-visited pages (often a homepage or a popular tool) have the most internal link "authority" to share — deliberately linking from those high-traffic pages to newer or less-visited content helps that content get found and gain traction faster than if it only existed in isolation.
Revisit old content periodically
As you publish new, related content, go back and add links to it from relevant older posts — internal linking isn't a one-time setup step; it's worth revisiting periodically as your site's content grows, since a new post can be a genuinely relevant link target for content published months earlier.