Content revised 20 October 2026.
An internal link connects one page of your website to another. Use it to help a visitor find the next useful piece of information and understand how your pages fit together.
Start with the reader’s next question
A guide about choosing a service may naturally lead to the service scope, a pricing page or another guide explaining a difficult detail. That is more helpful than attaching the same promotional link to every paragraph. The destination should deliver what the anchor text suggests.
Use both navigation and context
Menus, category pages and breadcrumbs help people move through the site. Links inside the main content can explain a more specific relationship. A useful website often needs both: a clear overall structure and a relevant next step within the article.
Make important links crawlable
Use ordinary links with a valid destination and an understandable label. Do not make access to an important page depend only on an unexplained control or a visitor knowing a hidden URL. Check the final rendered page, especially after a theme or menu change.
Review links as the website changes
- Update links that still point to moved or retired pages.
- Prefer the intended canonical URL over an unnecessary duplicate.
- Check that a service mentioned in an old article still exists.
- Keep the same useful information accessible on desktop and mobile.
Avoid arbitrary link targets
There is no useful rule that every article needs the same number of internal links. Choose destinations because they help the reader. Then check whether people can reach important pages through the actual navigation rather than judging the site by a link count alone.
Official guidance: Google’s crawlable-link guidance.