Internal Linking for Beginners: 7 Rules for Small Sites

Quick answer

Internal links are links from one page of your site to another. For a small business, link every service page from the menu or homepage, link each blog post to the service it supports using descriptive anchor text, and make sure no page you care about is orphaned. Google says every important page needs a link from another page.

Internal linking is one of the few SEO jobs that costs nothing but time, and it is often the quickest win on a small site. This guide covers what internal links do, seven rules that suit sites of five to fifty pages, how to write anchor text, how to find orphan pages, and a thirty-minute audit you can run this week.

What internal links actually do

Internal links do two jobs at once. For visitors, they are the route from a question to an answer to a decision: a homeowner reads your guide to damp problems, clicks through to your damp-proofing service, then to your contact page. For Google, they are how pages are found and how the relative importance of each page is judged.

Google is direct about the discovery part. Its link best practices page says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. A page with no internal links pointing to it, often called an orphan page, may still be found through a sitemap, but Google describes submitting a sitemap as merely a hint, so you are making Google work harder and giving the page no signal that it matters.

Seven internal linking rules for small sites

1. Link every service page from the main menu or homepage. These are your money pages; they should be one click from the front door.
2. Link every blog post to at least one service page. A guide that answers a question should point to the service that solves it.
3. Use descriptive anchor text. The clickable words should say what the next page is about.
4. Link related posts to each other. A guide on boiler pressure can link to one on boiler servicing; readers who want more keep going.
5. Use real HTML links. A normal link that Google can follow, not a button that only works through a script.
6. Fix links to old addresses. If a page moved, update links to point at the new address rather than relying on a redirect.
7. Keep it natural. Add links where a reader would want them, not to hit a number.

Anchor text: what good looks like

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. Google’s guidance says good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it links to. It also warns against generic phrases such as click here or read more, and against stuffing keywords into links.

Vary the wording a little across the site. If five posts link to your roofing page, they do not all need identical anchor text; roof repairs, roofing services and flat roof replacement can all point to the same page naturally.

A simple structure for a small business site

Think in three layers. The homepage links to each service page. Each service page links back to the homepage, to related services and to the guides that support it. Each guide links to the service it supports and to one or two related guides. This is often called a hub-and-spoke structure, and it suits almost every small business site.

On a site with six services and twenty blog posts, that means every service page receives links from the homepage, the menu and three or four guides, and every guide is reachable from at least one service page or a blog index. Nothing sits alone.

If your site is being rebuilt, plan this at the start. Our custom WordPress websites are built with a clear page structure from the first wireframe, which makes internal linking simple afterwards.

Find orphan and weak pages

You do not need paid tools to start. Google Search Console has a Links report whose top internally linked pages table shows which of your pages are linked the most from within your own site. You can also see which pages link to a given page.

Open the report and look at the internal links list. Your service pages should sit near the top. If a key service page has only one or two internal links while your privacy policy has dozens, your structure is pointing attention at the wrong pages. Pages missing from the list entirely are candidates for orphans.

Cross-check against your sitemap or your page list in WordPress. Any page that exists but does not appear in the Links report needs a link from somewhere relevant, or a decision about whether it should exist at all.

How many internal links is right?

There is no magic number. As general guidance, a blog post of around 1,500 words might carry four to eight internal links where they help the reader, plus your normal menu and footer. A service page might link to two or three related services, a handful of supporting guides and the contact or order page.

What matters more is that each link earns its place. A paragraph with five links in a row, chained together without context, is hard to read and gives each link less meaning. Google’s guidance specifically warns against chaining links without surrounding context.

Worked example: a cleaning company

Here is how a small cleaning company with three services and a handful of guides might wire its pages.

Every page has a route in and a route on, and every guide feeds a service. That is the whole job on a small site.

Mistakes that waste internal links

• Links that are not links. Google’s page notes that it can generally only crawl links that use a proper HTML link element. Buttons that navigate through a script alone may be missed.
• Links inside images with no text. If you must link an image, give it alt text that describes the destination.
• Footers stuffed with every page. A long list of town names in the footer helps nobody.
• Links to redirected or deleted pages. After a redesign, old links often point at addresses that now redirect or return errors.
• Every post linking only to the homepage. The homepage needs it least; point guides at services.

A thirty-minute internal link audit

1. List your service pages and your five most visited guides.
2. Open the Search Console Links report and note internal link counts for each.
3. For any service page with few links, find two or three guides that mention that service and add a link with descriptive anchor text.
4. Open each of the five guides and check it links to at least one service page.
5. Click every link on your homepage and main menu to confirm none lead to an error or a redirect.
6. Note any page you found with no links in, and either link to it or retire it.

Repeat this every few months, or whenever you publish a batch of new content. Our free SEO audit is a quick way to spot wider page problems at the same time.

When internal links are not the problem

Internal linking helps pages that already deserve to rank. It will not fix a site Google cannot index, thin service pages or a slow website. If your site is missing from Google altogether, start with our guide to a website not showing on Google, and if you are deciding whether to pay for help, our breakdown of SEO costs in the UK sets out what each level buys.

How we handle internal linking

Internal linking is part of the technical and content work in our SEO service at £249 a month, alongside rankings, content, technical health, link building and reports. If you need new guides to link from, our blog writing and content marketing is £199 a month. Every price is on our pricing page; order online or email us at support@luxbranding.co.uk.