What Is Internal linking? Why Is It Important for Local SEO?

The architecture of your website determines how a search engine will crawl and ultimately rank each of your local business pages. Businesses tend to place excessive emphasis on external links, but how you connect pages within your own website also matters, creating a path not only for your visitors but for search engines too.

Below are answers to common questions about internal linking, including what it is, its benefits, and how it relates to your local SEO strategy.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Disclosure: This article was partially written with AI and reviewed/edited by a human expert.

General Understanding

What is internal linking and how does it work?

Internal linking is when you link to a page from another page using a hyperlink that points to another page on your site. This is what connects each page of the website together, so that search engine crawlers are able to access and crawl related pages quickly and easily, as in the case of your most popular page, a service page, connecting to a blog post on a specific geographic location in an article. It is how the search engine knows what a specific piece of content is about, and how it understands the type of website hierarchy you have in place. An internal link can also link to content on the same page, also called a jump-down link.

Resource: yoast.com

What is the difference between an internal link and a backlink?

An internal link is when you link one page on your website to another, whereas a backlink is when a website completely outside of your website links to one of your website’s pages. You are in total control of your internal links, so you can decide where to place them and how to link them via your anchor text. When you have backlinks, they are like a “vote of confidence,” and when it comes to internal links, they help to structure your own website, passing on the authority from that backlink across the service pages and location pages of your website.

What is anchor text and how does it relate to this?

Anchor text is the word or words you use when you decide to hyperlink from one page to another. By using descriptive anchor text, you are giving search engine crawlers the ability to determine exactly what the destination of the link is and what that webpage is actually about, meaning if the search engine determines the link is about something specific, it will show your webpage within the correct results for that particular search term. So instead of clicking the words “click here,” users and search engine crawlers will be shown exactly what is at the other end of that link and what they will find there.

For example, we know that accessibility is important for SEO, so let’s create an internal link to that article from this one. Like so.

What are the benefits of internal links for local SEO?

First, know that search engines like Google use three primary means to make sense and understand the hierarchy and purpose of your site’s content:

• XML sitemap
• Breadcrumbs
• Internal links

When it comes to improving your website’s local SEO results, internal links help with the authority and location factors that show your website’s relevance and ranking. There is a term called “link juice” or “link strength,” where the value of links builds as search engine bots crawl them and index the content.

A common mistake is omitting in-content internal links, forcing visitors (and search engine bots) to find content on your site using only navigation links.

Why do businesses that are local need to be concerned with internal links?

When you are able to pass on the authority of a more well-known page, such as the homepage, for example, to a page that is less well-known, like the specific local service pages on a website, the specific services in that specific locality are able to be more visible and rank better on a search engine.

It’s also important to note that Google looks for “in-content” links between pages to better understand your website. It largely ignores and devalues your primary navigation, as well as any footer or aside links.

Should I always use the same keyword as the anchor text?

There’s no absolute rule. If you look at Wikipedia, the SEO Gold Standard, the anchor text is repeated and stays the same every time. A link to World War II will probably use “World War II” as the anchor text. But it’s also OK, perhaps safer, to vary your anchor text to avoid keyword stuffing.

Does internal linking have an effect on the user experience?

Yes, it can. Providing logical pathways that allow a user to easily find the local content they may be looking for. The more time they spend on your site, the more pages that they view. The lower your bounce rate, the higher the likelihood that a visitor stays and finds the exact local service that they were looking for. This is good for your SEO and ensures that searchers who may come after your customers can find your local content quickly and easily.

Execution and Proper Application

Using an innerlinking strategy takes some serious planning and should be done by someone that understands technical SEO.

How should we determine the right anchor text for local links?

Use natural modifiers. This is when you would choose something very specific about your location as the anchor, and would include a location. At 44ORANGE, we would always suggest making your anchor a little more unique. Try a variation that includes the target keyword mixed with the city, and make sure it reads as naturally as possible.

For example, 44ORANGE does local SEO in Colorado Springs, so let’s create an internal link to it in this blog post.

What is an “in-content” link?

An “in-content” link is an internal or external hyperlink (which could be anchor text or an image) within the main body of your web page’s text. It excludes any peripheral links in your headers, navigations, asides, or footers. Search engines like Google place greater emphasis and pass more link juice through in-content links than peripheral links.

If you’re savvy with HTML5 semantic markup, you can help search engines and browsers know what your main web page content is by placing it inside <main></main> tags. Some even add <article> tags. Web content management software such as WordPress automatically adds <main> and <article> semantic tags to your web pages and posts. However, there are notorious drag-and-drop web editors that either don’t use or strip <main> and <article> tags out if the web designer doesn’t know what they’re doing (Elementor users … I’m talking to you!). Without semantic tags, the web designer is hoping the search engine figures it out on its own — that’s not diligent SEO.

What is content siloing?

Content siloing refers to a website strategy in which highly related webpages are structured and connected by a hierarchy of internal links. For example, plumbing services may have a parent page that links to each county where they offer their services. The county service pages would then be linked only to each other and back to the parent page, but not to any external pages. By doing this, you ensure that the most relevant pages will always be connected by relevant and related pages.

That silo heirarchy might look something like this:

• Service Areas
  • El Paso County
  • Teller County
  • Pueblo County

In essence, these pages would have internal links to each other but not to any other pages on the website (except maybe to your About Us or Contact Us pages). This avoids diluting link juice and concentrates it all on just these pages.

How many internal links should be on a page?

There really is no set rule for how many internal links a specific page should have, as long as the links are useful and relevant. However, too many links to other pages on your website will dilute overall link equity, reducing the link strength passed to those pages. If you link to a ton of pages, each of those pages will only get a small fraction of that link juice passed through the link, instead of one main page getting all of that link juice. As always, use common sense when linking internally:

• A good rule of thumb is not to have more than 100 links (external or internal) on any web page.
• Always include at least one internal link on every page and post on your site, including your Terms of Use and Privacy Policy pages, to avoid a dead end and keep link juice flowing.
• Avoid orphaned content — every page and post should have at least one internal link to it, unless you have an intentional reason not to (be sure to add ‘noindex’ to such pages).
• Link to content that is highly relevant to your page to avoid confusing your users and reducing the SEO benefit for the targeted keyword.
• If you are linking to pages that provide little to no information relevant to that topic on the page, the page should be trimmed of that specific link to avoid confusion.
• Don’t forget, as you add new blog posts, to go back to previous relevant blog posts and add in-content internal links to your new posts, and vice versa. This is a manual process, and you likely won’t find a reliable tool to automate it.
• Remember that you can also use an image as an internal link if it makes sense for visitors to your website.
• Finally, there’s really no need to link to another page or post more than once.

How should we audit our current internal linking structure?

This can best be done by using specialized SEO crawlers that will review every possible internal link on your domain and tell you which pages link to that page, whether there are broken internal links leading to a 404 error, if you have any orphaned pages or dead ends, and whether there are unnecessary redirects.

Moving forward, use an internal linking strategy for your website.

Internal linking is a great technique not only to provide structure to your website, but also for SEO. When used effectively, you will start to see a positive influence on page authority and local SEO, which will help your localized pages. Take advantage of what your internal linking strategy can do for your page ranking and your search engine rankings. At 44ORANGE, we are always happy to audit a client’s internal links to see what they currently look like and identify any improvements we can make to enhance SEO for your local business page.