What defines website success? There are dozens of ways to answer this question. And many are true. But what matters most? It’s hard to argue that it’s the experiences your users have and your site’s organic visibility.
These two things define whether people come to your site. And whether they will stay. So, how do you improve UX and SEO simultaneously? There are many opportunities. Still, there is one that’s often overlooked. But that holds enormous value.
This article will guide you through SEO internal linking to help recognize its hidden power and make the most out of it on your website!
What Is Internal and External Linking in SEO?
Internal links are those that lead to other pages on your website. They help users navigate through your site. And they enable search engines to understand your pages and distribute ranking authority within them.
External links are those that lead to external sources. They enhance the quality of your content by supporting your claims with data from primary sources and giving users something else to explore regarding your topic. For search engines, they act as a signal of value and trustworthiness.
Both an external and internal linking strategy matter for optimization. Yet, the latter one is frequently overlooked and fades against other SEO strategies.
SEO Internal Linking: What Does It Actually Do?
Google refers to internal links as cross-references to your own content. It also states that every important page should be referenced by at least one other page.
It emphasizes that webmasters should actually pay more attention to it in order to help both Google and people make a better sense of their sites. That is, your on-site linking strategy has two main areas of influence: UX and SEO.
The UX Side
From the user’s perspective, connecting your pages gives an experience boost. It affects 3 crucial UX areas:
- Navigation: Inner references act as breadcrumbs, helping users hop from one page to another intuitively and purposefully. When a user comes across another related link while exploring your copy, they get a chance to study the topic they’re interested in more thoroughly. This makes their journeys more comprehensive.
- Engagement: Naturally, users bounce after receiving an answer to their primary question (search query). That is, after viewing the page they’ve initially landed on. However, when your pages are connected and you give them something else interesting to interact with, they might stay longer. This can potentially increase time per session and reduce bounce rate.
- Conversion: A smart internal link structure can help you navigate users not just from one topic to another, but actually move them through the marketing funnel. Here’s how it can go:
- Someone lands on an informative blog post detailing the problem they have.
- Then, they follow to another informative page that shows potential solutions.
- And finally, they proceed to a landing page that offers them to solve the problem right now.
This way, you can stimulate conversions. And make them intuitive.
The SEO Side
From the search engines’ perspective, connecting your pages improves your site’s understanding, in the first place. Additionally, it delivers the right signals and creates hierarchy. It affects 4 crucial SEO areas:
- Crawlability: Your linking strategy helps search engines find pathways to more pages on your website and crawl them too. This creates a more holistic view of your site. Secondly, it establishes the relationship between different pages. As a result, your site looks more connected. Finally, such a cross-reference helps establish hierarchy. It tells search engines which your key pages are, giving them a higher likelihood of ranking high.
- Link equity: Cross-referencing allows you to get your less prominent pages noticed by search engines. This is called link equity. It works like this:
- You have a high-authority page. It shows real value and tops SERPs.
- You link to other pages on it.
- Those referenced pages receive a part of that authority. Respectively, their ranking potential boosts.
- SEO signals: When your strategy is implemented wisely and benefits UX, this will likely lead to an improvement in different UX metrics, such as bounce rate, dwell time, and pages per session. These metrics signal relevancy to users’ needs. Respectively, your ranking potential grows.
- SERP features and AI results: Connecting your pages helps create a stronger topical relationship between them. It also boosts crawlability and structure understanding, which means that search engines can better relate specific pieces of content to users’ queries. This increases the likelihood of getting into different SERP features and AI search results.
How to Build Internal Links for SEO That Actually Work
Step 1: Define Content Hierarchy First
One of the purposes of SEO internal linking is to communicate your site’s structure to search engines. While crawling, search engines identify topic clusters and page hierarchy. Based on this, they define which pages are primary and need to rank higher. But you don’t want this process to go uncontrolled. You want to have some say in what pages should be considered the most important ones.
To define your hierarchy, visualize a top-down, tree-like sitemap. Your homepage should be at the top. Then it should connect with the top content categories (your pillars) and subcategories related to them.
Step 2: Audit Your Current Connections
Use AI SEO tools of your choice to conduct a thorough internal linking audit. When you gather a complete list of all pages and references, compare it to the hierarchy you’ve created earlier. See where hierarchy is inconsistent and where you have additional linking opportunities.
Also, check for broken links and orphaned pages that might be harming UX and crawlability.
Step 3: Integrate Contextual References
During your audit, you will see what type of references your site uses the most. Menu and footer links are the easiest to implement. So, chances are that you will have quite a lot of them. However, they don’t hold quite as much value as contextual links—those placed directly inside your content. That is, you’re not receiving all the SEO benefits adding internal links yet.
To change this, integrate contextual references where possible. Reassess the content on your high-authority pages and find relevant content you can tie to them contextually. Mind the hierarchy in the process.
Step 4: Optimize Anchor Text
Anchor text holds huge importance. It defines whether people will click on a link. And whether they will have a positive UX. It also affects how well search engines understand the site’s structure and topical relations. So, you have to optimize it well.
A perfect anchor text should:
- Be concise.
- Perfectly reflect the content.
- Be relevant to current content.
- Fit naturally into the text.
- Not contain generic phrases like “click here.”
- Include a target keyword (where possible).
Implement these criteria when adding new references or improving the existing ones. When mentioning the same page multiple times, be sure to use different anchor text variations to avoid duplication.
Most importantly, don’t overdo it. Prioritize user experience over SEO. That is, don’t stuff links for no reason (if they don’t offer value). And don’t overoptimize your anchor text so that it makes no sense to the reader.
Step 5: Fix Existing Problems
Go back to your audit findings to fix mistakes. Start with broken links. Once you’ve identified them, assess their importance. Is that content still important and relevant, but just moved to a different location? If yes, set up a 301 redirect or update the URL. If it’s no longer needed, remove the mention from other pages.
Then, work on your orphan pages. These are pieces of content that are not referenced anywhere. That is, this content remains undiscovered. You need to fix this and mention these pages somewhere on your site.
Internal Linking Strategy Mistakes to Avoid
As you work on links to improve user experience and overall website success, you want to avoid common mistakes that might undermine your efforts. Here are the top errors to keep in mind:
- Using generic, non-descriptive anchor text.
- Connecting irrelevant pieces of content.
- Overusing the same anchor text over and over.
- Stuffing too many internal references.
- Ignoring broken links.
- Over-relying on redirects creates long redirect chains.
- Missing orphan pages out of sight.
- Implementing an unclear or false hierarchy.
Keep these errors top of mind when implementing the steps shared above. This will help you reduce the curve and achieve greater results from your optimization efforts.
Measure the Impact and Improve
Nothing in SEO is static. It requires consistent improvement to stay ahead. So, simply creating inner mentions isn’t enough.
To get the most benefits, measure how your essential metrics change after you take the steps mentioned earlier. Look at each of your important pages to see how the following metrics change:
- Page authority
- Rankings
- Organic traffic
- Conversion rates
- User engagement
Let these insights guide your strategy.
The Bottom Line
Internal links, though often overlooked, create a UX–SEO power combo. This combo can improve user engagement and take you higher in SERPs. All in all, it can make your website outdo the competition and accomplish its goals. You just need to implement inner mentions the right way.
Start by using the steps we shared here. And get into a continuous-improvement mindset for the best outcomes!