Digital marketing term
Internal Linking
An internal link connects one page on your website to another page on the same domain, helping both users and search engines navigate and understand your site's structure.
Detailed explanation
Internal links are the connective tissue of a website: navigation menus, breadcrumbs, related-content sections, and contextual links within body copy that point from one of your pages to another. They serve two audiences at once — visitors who need a path to related information, and search engine crawlers that rely on links to discover and understand the relationship between pages.
A deliberate internal linking strategy is central to the topic-cluster approach in modern SEO: linking supporting articles up to a pillar page, and the pillar page back down to its supporting articles, signals topical depth and helps distribute authority, sometimes called link equity, from well-linked pages to newer or weaker ones. Orphan pages, meaning pages with no internal links pointing to them, are often invisible to both users browsing the site and crawlers trying to find them.
For “what is an internal link” or “internal linking best practices” searches, this entry is a starting point. Read it together with Anchor Text for how link text supports these connections, and SEO for how internal linking fits the broader topic-cluster strategy.
Frequently asked questions
- How many internal links should a page have?
- There is no fixed number — the guideline is to link wherever it genuinely helps a reader find related, useful content, and to make sure every important page has at least a few internal links pointing to it so it is not orphaned.
- What is an orphan page and why is it a problem?
- An orphan page has no internal links pointing to it, which makes it harder for both visitors and search engine crawlers to find, often leaving it under-indexed or effectively invisible despite being live on the site.
Related terms
Internal links for the topic cluster — read these concepts together.
- Topic ClusterA Topic Cluster is an SEO-focused content structure made up of a group of content pieces that cover different subtopics of a main pillar topic, all internally linked back to that pillar page.
- Content PillarA Content Pillar is the core topic that forms the foundation of a brand's content strategy, covered comprehensively and in depth; smaller, more specific pieces of content are built around this topic.
- Anchor TextAnchor text is the visible, clickable words of a hyperlink, and search engines use it as a signal for what the linked page is about.
- SEOSEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the set of technical and content practices that help a website rank more visibly in organic search results.
- On-Page SEOOn-Page SEO: On-page search engine optimization. This digigund glossary entry explains how the term is used in digital marketing.