What are internal links, and why do they matter?
Short answer
Internal links are links from one page of your website to another page of the same website. They matter because Google follows them to discover pages, reads the link wording to understand what each page is about, and customers use them to get from a question to the service page that answers it.
When one page of your website links to another page of the same website, that is an internal link, and it matters because it’s how Google and your customers find their way from one page to the next. The menu, the footer and the breadcrumb trail are all internal links. So is a sentence on your drain cleaning page that links to your sewer camera inspection page.
What internal links do for Google
Google finds most pages by following links from pages it already knows. Its documentation says so, and it also says the visible wording of a link (the anchor text) helps it understand the page being linked to.
A page that no other page links to is called an orphan page. Google may still find it through a sitemap, but it arrives with no context, and no signal from the rest of the site that the page is worth attention. It’s commonly observed that pages linked from many places on a site, starting with the homepage, are treated as the more important ones. Google doesn’t publish how much weight this carries.
What they do for a customer
They carry a reader to the next step. Picture a homeowner in Escondido who lands on an article about a water heater making a rumbling noise. If the article links to the water heater repair page, and that page has a phone number, the path to a call is two clicks. If the article links nowhere, the reader goes back to Google and may well call whoever is listed next.
What good internal linking looks like
The work is plain and deliberate. The points I check:
- Anchor text that describes the destination. “Tankless water heater installation” tells Google and the reader what is behind the link. “Click here” tells them nothing.
- Links inside the body text where they are relevant, in addition to the menu.
- Every service page reachable within a few clicks of the homepage.
- Related pages connected in both directions: the service page links to the cities where it’s offered, and each city page links back to the services.
- No links pointing at deleted pages or at old addresses that redirect.
How the pages are grouped in the first place is a separate decision, and it belongs to site architecture.
Common mistakes on home-service websites
Articles that never link to the service they describe come first, because that is the most common one. Others I look for:
| Mistake | Why it hurts |
|---|---|
| A footer listing dozens of cities on every page | Links repeated across the whole site in a block tell Google little about any one page |
| The same keyword-heavy anchor text forced into every paragraph | It reads badly, and it’s the kind of pattern Google’s guidance warns against |
| Two different pages linked with the same wording | Google gets mixed signals about which page is meant for that search, a problem called keyword cannibalization |
| Pages left orphaned after a redesign | The page still exists, but nothing leads to it |
How much they matter, and where the limit is
You control them entirely, which is why they are worth more than their cost suggests. You don’t need anyone’s permission to add a link from your own homepage to your own service page.
Internal links move attention around inside a website. They don’t create standing the site hasn’t earned. That comes from backlinks, meaning other websites linking to yours.
Internal linking is part of on-page SEO, and it suits the way I work. I measure where a page ranks before I change the links pointing to that one page, then measure again about two weeks later. If the page moved, the change stays. If it didn’t, I have learned that the links weren’t what that page was missing.