What is internal linking?
As the name suggests, internal linking is the process of creating hyperlinks that lead to a different page on the same domain instead of an external destination.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What are the benefits of it?
The biggest benefits of internal linking are:
- It helps your users more easily navigate your website
- It helps encourage user engagement
- It helps improve your website’s SEO
Let us take a look at each one in more detail:
First, internal links—particularly the ones used for navigation—make it possible for your users to easily hop from one page to another on your website and access your content.
Second, internal links—specifically those found in your actual website copy or blog posts—encourage your users to explore your website and content instead of stopping at just a single page or blog post.
Finally, internal links help search engine crawlers better understand the structure of and index your website—which we will take a closer look at in the following section:
Question #2: How does it help with SEO?
Internal linking helps with SEO by showing web crawlers exactly where they need to go and what pages they need to index instead of letting them figure things out on their own at the risk of them missing important pages or getting the structure of your website wrong.
In addition to this, however, internal linking also improves your website’s SEO by allowing you to spread ranking power (also known as link equity) across your entire website instead of just specific pages.
Question #3: What is the optimal internal linking structure for SEO?
The most optimal internal linking structure for SEO is a pyramid, in which your homepage links to several other main pages, which, in turn, each links to subpages, which then link to even less important pages. This is the best structure for distributing link equity across your whole website, increasing the odds of each page ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
To better understand this, let us take a fitness website with the homepage www.xyzfit.com. This homepage can be linked to www.xyzfit.com/programs, which, in turn, can be linked to www.xyzfit.com/programs/resistance-training, which can then be linked to a page called www.xyzfit.com/programs/resistance-training/powerlifting.
Question #4: What is the difference between internal linking and external linking?
The biggest difference between internal linking and external linking lies in the names: internal and external. As we have seen earlier, internal linking is the process of creating hyperlinks that lead to pages on the same domain. In contrast, external linking, as the name suggests, is the process of creating hyperlinks that lead to pages that are on an external domain.
For example, www.xyzfit.com leading to www.xyzfit.com/programs is an internal link—and so is www.xyzfit.com/programs leading to www.xyzfit.com/program/resistance-training. In contrast, www.xyzfit.com leading to www.uvwgymapparel.com is an external link.
Question #5: Is there a limit to the number of internal links I can put on a page?
While, there is technically no limit to the number of internal links you can put on a page, putting too much can negatively impact the SEO and user experience of your website.
But how much is too much?
Well, in terms of SEO, anything over 150 can be considered too much because most spiders are configured to only crawl about that many internal links from a single page.
In terms of user experience, on the other hand, the limit is way lower. Depending on the length of your content, even five extra non-navigation internal links can get distracting and overwhelming for your users.
If you want a concrete number, though, you will have to conduct user testing because it would ultimately depend on factors such as:
- The preferences of your target users
- The type of website you have
- The type of content your website has
- The purpose of your website