Crawvix

Internal Linking Strategy: Link Your Pages for People and Crawlers

Crawvix Editorial Team · Published October 29, 2026 · Last updated October 29, 2026 · 10 min read

Internal links are the links from one page of your website to another page of the same website. They are how visitors move around, and they are one of the main ways search engines discover pages. Google's own starter guide notes that the vast majority of new pages it finds each day are found through links. If a page is hard to reach through your internal links, it is hard to find for everyone.

An internal linking strategy is a plan for those links. It decides which pages matter most, which pages should point to them, what the clickable text says and how the whole structure is kept up to date as the site grows. This guide is for site owners, editors and developers who want a method that is simple enough to follow and honest about what it can do. By the end you will have a short list of priority pages, a set of linking rules, and a way to check the result.

Good internal links make your site easier to use and to crawl. They cannot make a page rank or be indexed, and there is no magic number of links that works for every site.

Before you begin

You will need:

  • A list of the pages that matter to your business: the home page, your main category or service pages, and your best guides or product pages.
  • Editing access to your pages, menus, footers and templates.
  • A Google Search Console property (see Set Up Google Search Console) for the Links report.
  • A crawler or browser developer tools to check the final HTML. Allow two to four hours for a small site.

Risk is low, since you are mostly adding and improving links. Do not mass-edit templates without a backup, and do not remove existing navigation links until you know what depends on them.

Google's page on link best practices makes a few points that shape everything below.

  • Google can reliably extract a URL from an <a> element that has an href attribute. Links built from other elements, such as a <span> with a click handler or an onclick that calls a function, are not recommended, and Google may fail to follow them.
  • Links added by JavaScript are fine if they use the same <a href> markup.
  • The href should be a real address that resolves, not a script-style pseudo-URL such as goTo('products') written into the href.
  • Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.
  • The text between the opening and closing <a> tags is the anchor text. Make it descriptive, reasonably short, and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it points to.
  • Avoid generic text such as "click here" or "read more", and do not stuff keywords into anchors.

Google does not publish an ideal number of links per page. Its advice is that if a page seems to have too many links, it probably does.

Step-by-step instructions

Step 1: List your priority pages

Write down the pages you most want people and crawlers to find. For a business site this is often the home page, three to ten main service or category pages, your contact or pricing page, and a few of your strongest guides. Put them in a simple table with the page title, the address and the job the page does, such as "explains the service" or "answers the top question".

This list is your target list. In the next steps, you will make sure each one is linked from the right places. Resist the temptation to mark everything as a priority, since a list of 200 priorities is no list at all.

What success looks like: a one-page list of priority pages with a purpose for each.

Open Search Console, choose Links, and look at the Internal links section. The Top linked pages table lists the pages that receive the most links from other pages on your site. Select a URL to see which of your pages link to it.

Compare this table with your priority list. If an important page sits low in the table or is missing from it, it needs more links. Two limits apply: the tables show up to 1,000 rows, and the report is a sample rather than a full list, so it can omit some URLs. The report also does not say whether a link carries nofollow. Treat it as a guide and confirm with a crawl when the answer matters.

What success looks like: you know which priority pages have few internal links.

Step 3: Make the navigation do the broad work

Menus, breadcrumbs and footers link to the broad areas of the site from every page. Use them for your top-level sections and a small set of key pages, not for everything. A menu with 60 items serves nobody. If your site has directories, use them to group similar topics, since Google notes that URL directories help most on larger sites.

All navigation links must be real <a href> links in the HTML the server sends or the page renders, not items that appear only after a click handler runs. Test the menu with JavaScript off. For a mobile menu that opens with a button, make sure the links exist in the page and are not fetched only after the tap.

What success looks like: every top-level section is reachable from every page by a plain link.

Step 4: Add contextual links inside your content

Contextual links sit inside the body text, where they make sense to the reader. They are your most flexible tool, because you choose the place and the wording. For each priority page, find three to five existing pages on closely related topics and add a link where a reader would naturally want more detail.

Write the anchor text as a short phrase that says what the reader will find:

<!-- Weak: tells nobody anything -->
<a href="/guides/email-spf-record">Click here</a> to learn more.

<!-- Better: descriptive and concise -->
Fix your <a href="/guides/email-spf-record">SPF record</a> before turning on DMARC.

A useful test from Google is to read the anchor text on its own. If it does not make sense out of context, make it more descriptive. Keep the anchor short, so link only the key phrase and not a whole sentence. Do not chain links together with no text between them, and do not repeat the same keyword-heavy anchor everywhere. Vary wording naturally.

Link in both directions where it helps. A beginner guide can link to an advanced one, and the advanced one can link back for people who need the basics. Using related pages like Fix Duplicate URLs and Incorrect Canonical Tags from within relevant text also tells readers where to go next.

What success looks like: each priority page now has several contextual links from related pages.

Step 5: Cover images, buttons and cards

Image links and call-to-action buttons also count. For an image inside a link, Google uses the image's alt text as the anchor text. If the alt is empty, the link has no text, so write a short description of where the link goes. Make sure card layouts, "related posts" blocks and buttons use <a href> and not <div onclick>.

What success looks like: every image link has meaningful alt text, and every card or button that navigates is an anchor.

Step 6: Keep the structure shallow and balanced

A visitor should reach any important page in a few clicks from the home page. If a page needs ten clicks, it is buried. Look at long lists, such as archives and category pages. Pagination can bury older pages, as explained in Pagination SEO Best Practices. Link older but still valuable items from relevant newer pages or from a hub page that groups a topic.

A hub page, sometimes called a pillar or topic page, is a page that introduces a subject and links to the detailed pages about it. The detailed pages link back to the hub. This gives both people and crawlers a clear route, and it is the practical form of a site structure plan. For planning the overall structure, see Site Architecture and URL Structure.

What success looks like: every priority page is within three or four clicks of the home page, and every topic cluster has a hub.

A link that points to a page that no longer exists wastes a visitor's click and a crawler's time. A link that points to a redirect adds an extra hop. Update internal links so they point straight to the final address, and fix pages that return errors. The process is described in Find Broken Internal Links and Redirects and Redirect Chains and Loops.

Also make sure the pages you link to are the canonical versions. Google advises linking internally to your canonical URL, not to a duplicate.

What success looks like: a crawl of the site shows internal links returning a 200 status and not passing through redirects.

Step 8: Add a maintenance habit

Set a routine. When you publish a new page, add links to it from at least two relevant existing pages, and add links from it to related pages. Once a quarter, re-run the Links report and the priority list, retire links to pages you have removed, and look for pages with no incoming links. Orphan Pages explains how to find and connect those.

What success looks like: new pages are never published without incoming links, and the review dates are in your calendar.

Final verification checklist

  • A written list of priority pages exists, each with a purpose.
  • Every priority page has at least one internal link, and ideally several contextual links.
  • All navigation links are <a> elements with a real href.
  • Anchor text is descriptive, short and varied, not "click here".
  • Image links have meaningful alt text.
  • Important pages are reachable within a few clicks from the home page.
  • Internal links point to canonical URLs and do not pass through redirects or return errors.
  • The Search Console Links report has been reviewed against the priority list.

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Links built with onclick or span elements. Use <a href="/real/address">.
  • Generic anchors everywhere. "Read more" and "click here" say nothing. Describe the destination.
  • Huge menus and footers with hundreds of links. Keep global navigation focused, and use contextual links for the rest.
  • Linking only from the menu. One link from a menu is a start. Add links from related content.
  • Pointing links at redirected or non-canonical addresses. Link to the final canonical URL.
  • Keyword-stuffed anchors. Google's link guidance says keyword stuffing violates its spam policies. Write anchors for readers.
  • Forgetting new pages. A page published with no incoming link is an orphan. Add links on the day you publish.
  • Treating the Links report as complete. It is a sample capped at 1,000 rows per table. Use a crawl for a full picture.

Frequently asked questions

How many internal links should a page have?

Google gives no ideal number. Include the links a reader would reasonably want, and if the page looks overloaded, remove some. Quality and relevance matter more than a target count.

Links are how Google finds pages and understands how they relate, and the anchor text gives context about the target. How much any single link affects ranking is not something Google publishes, so avoid promises. Focus on usefulness and discoverability.

Normally no. Google describes nofollow for links you do not trust, and sponsored and ugc for paid and user-generated links. Ordinary links between your own pages do not need it.

Does the home page need to link to everything?

No. It should link to your main sections. Those pages then link to their own content. A tidy hierarchy with hub pages works better than a home page crowded with links.

Compare your sitemap or CMS page list with the pages a crawl reaches by following links. Pages that appear in the first list but not the second are orphans. The Orphan Pages guide walks through it. Crawvix's "No orphan pages" check does a similar comparison between sitemap addresses and the links found while crawling.

Official references

Next step: See how Crawvix checks a website and capture a baseline once scanning opens. This guide provides technical information, not a guarantee of rankings, traffic or index inclusion.

In this category

All 15 On-Page SEO guides