Glossary
Internal links are how a site tells search engines what matters on it
Internal links connect the pages of one site. What they do for crawling, context and importance, how the different kinds of link compare, the mistakes that leave pages stranded, and a working rule for how many to use.
Want to know where your own site stands? Run a free Growth Scan
What internal links do
An internal link is a link from one page of a site to another page on the same site. It does three jobs at once.
It lets crawlers find pages: search engines discover most URLs by following links, and a page nothing links to may never be crawled. It gives context: the anchor text and the sentence around it tell a search engine what the target is about. And it signals importance: pages linked from many relevant places look more central to the site than pages linked from one.
For the link to count, a crawler has to be able to follow it. Google’s guidance is plain about this: use an ordinary anchor element with an href. A button that navigates with JavaScript alone is invisible to a crawler.
The kinds of internal link, and what each is good for
| Dimension | What it does well | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| Contextual links in the body | Carries the most meaning: the sentence explains why the target is relevant, and readers follow it. | Has to be written and maintained by a person, page by page. |
| Main navigation | Makes the most important sections reachable from every page. | Identical everywhere, so it says little about any single page. |
| Breadcrumbs | Show where a page sits in the hierarchy and link it to its parents. | Only ever link upwards. |
| Hub and listing pages | Gather related pages under one topic so none is stranded. | Become lists of links with no explanation if nobody writes them properly. |
| Footer links | Give the long tail of pages a path from everywhere. | Carry the least context, and turn into a keyword dump when overloaded. |
Mistakes that leave pages stranded
- Orphan pages: published, in the sitemap, and linked from nowhere on the site.
- Links a crawler cannot follow, such as JavaScript click handlers with no href.
- Links that point at redirects or dead pages, which waste crawling and leak the context the link was meant to carry.
- Links to the non-canonical version of a page, which argue with your own canonical tag.
- The same exact-match anchor inserted hundreds of times by a plugin.
- Important pages reachable only through site search or a filter, which crawlers do not use.
A working rule, and how this site enforces it
Every page should be linked from somewhere a reader would expect to find it, and should link onward to the pages a reader would want next: its parent, its closest siblings, the service or guide that goes deeper, and one clear next step.
On this site that is enforced rather than hoped for. Each page declares its editorial links, a build fails if any of them points at a page that does not exist, and a check flags any indexable page nothing links to, any page with no contextual links, and any anchor text used so often it has stopped meaning anything.
BOOSTD treats adding a safe internal link as low-risk, reversible work that can run on its own under Safe Autopilot. Changing navigation or templates is a material change and waits for approval.
Questions about internal linking
How many internal links should a page have?
There is no number Google requires. Link where a reader would want to go next, and stop there.
As a working rule, this site aims for five to fifteen meaningful contextual links on a page, fewer on a short one, and treats more than that as a prompt to ask whether each link is earning its place.
Do navigation and footer links count?
Yes, they are real links and crawlers follow them. They carry less context, because the same links appear on every page, so they help discovery more than they explain relevance.
Should anchor text match the target keyword exactly?
It should describe the target accurately, which often includes the words people search for. The same exact phrase on hundreds of links looks engineered and reads badly; natural variation is both safer and more useful.
References
Sources
The primary documents and published research this page relies on. Platform rules change, so check the source before acting on a detail.
Last updated · Published by Zubair Afzal (responsible editor), on owner authorisation