Internal Linking

What Are Internal Links?

Internal links are links on your website that link to other pages on your site.

Internal Links vs External Links

External links on the other hand are links that link from your website to any other website.

Meaning that any link that is linking to another domain is called an external link.

What are Outbound or Inbound Links?

When talking about backlinks, external links are usually also classified as inbound (inlinks) or outbound links (outlinks).

The same external link is outbound for one site and inbound for another.

Inbound links are external links coming to your website from other websites. They link to you.

Any incoming links are inbound.

Outbound links are external links coming from your website to other websites. You link to them.

Any outgoing links are outbound.

As you can see external links are the opposite of internal links.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is the practice of interlinking relevant pages on your website.

Proper and strategic internal linking is an SEO practice that focuses on:

• Redistributing page authority (PageRank)
• Providing semantic context to search engines (site structure)
• Making sure users can navigate to valuable pages if needed
• Making sure that sites are easier to crawl and index

Internal linking is one of the most important SEO practices out there.

Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite, analyzed client data and found a strong link between the number of internal links on a page and its traffic.

He summarized his findings with this quote:

Pages with fewer internal links get less traffic, and pages with more internal links get more traffic.

Types of Internal Links

There are two main types of internal links and they both have unique benefits and downsides.

Internal link types are:

• Navigational
• Contextual

Navigational Internal Links

Navigational internal links are links inside the main navigation menus of your website. Think navbar, footer, sidebars, breadcrumbs, and any other component or CMS Collection list-based links.

These types of internal links are called navigational because they don’t provide context but make it very easy for users to navigate through the site.

Benefits of Navigational Internal Links

Navigation is a huge part of UX and search engines expect to find all the most important pages there.

Also, crawlers can easily understand what components are navigational because they will have repeatable patterns that will not change at all.

If navigation is different on different pages, it still usually changes in predictable patterns.

This means that navigational links have the following benefits:

• They add internal links with minimal effort
• They clearly defined the main pages
• Users need them for fast navigation

Downsides of Navigational Internal Links

Navigational internal links don’t convey much semantic meaning about how exactly each page relates to each other.

But they always point to the most important pages on your site.

This is why crawlers trust navigational links, but they can’t tell why they are important.

Crawlers also can’t tell how each page supports or helps another page on your site, by simply looking at navigation component links.

This means the biggest downsides of navigational links are:

• You can create “fake” importance for irrelevant pages
• There is no surrounding content to explain relationships between pages
• It’s easy to make every page equally important, especially for smaller sites
• Lower internal link value in the eyes of search engines

Contextual Internal Links

Contextual internal links are internal links that are typically found in Rich Text Blocks (within paragraphs) in Webflow.

Here’s an example of a contextual link that is much more valuable for Webflow SEO. See? I just linked contextually!

Contextual links are more valuable than navigation links because crawlers can find context before and after the link.

That context comes from the content that the link is added to.

Benefits of Contextual Internal Links

A contextual link:

• guides users and crawlers to related content.
• clarifies the relationship between pages.
• helps index pages not listed in the navigation, helping to avoid orphan pages.
• offers a natural linking method.
• holds higher value for search engines.
• prioritizes content, unlike uniform navigational links.

Contextual internal links allow crawlers to create a very clear picture of how each web page on your site connects to another.

They are called contextual links exactly for that reason! They provide context about why page X is related to page Y.

The context that you provide when linking contextually comes from headings, page topics, anchor (link) text keywords, metadata, and many other sources.

Another huge benefit of contextual linking is that crawlers can find and reach new or non-indexed pages this way.

To have an easily crawlable website, each page on that site needs to be reachable by 3 or fewer clicks from the homepage. This is easy to do when there are just a few pages, but what happens when there are hundreds of pages? Thousands of pages?

Nobody would want to add 3 thousand links to their navigation bar. That’s why linking contextually is so important!

Downsides of Contextual Internal Links

Time.

The biggest downside of contextual internal linking is that you will need to spend a lot of time creating them.

This is why you should consider keeping a content inventory if you have more than a few dozen pages on your website.

Another downside is that whenever you publish a new page, you will have to find ways to internally link to that new page from other existing pages.

So it’s is another way of saying… Even more time!

Because as your site grows, you will spend more and more time internally linking pages together.

To summarize, the biggest downsides of contextual links are:

• Takes a lot of time to manage as the site grows
• Requires great content operations to do correctly
• Uncovering linking opportunities requires constant website auditing
• Becomes harder and harder as the site grows bigger

Luckily, more and more tools are popping up that can help with internal linking.

Is CMS Collection List Internal Links Navigational or Contextual?

You should consider all CMS Collection lists on your page that have hyperlinks or link blocks, navigational.

Yes, CMS Collection List components can be created in a way that would be more contextual than simple navbar or footer links.

But they are still navigational because they link equally!

You can create complex sorting and filtering rules, but the patterns will probably still be repetitive:

• Anchor texts are the same on every page
• Surrounding content is the same on each page
• The content inside the link block is the same each time you link

Internal Linking Benefits for SEO

Internal linking is probably the most critical and important SEO task for any website.

And this is not coming just from me, that’s what Joe Mueller from Google said himself.

Internal linking is a valuable and difficult task, especially if we are talking about websites that have hundreds or thousands of pages.

And most sites that reach their traffic goals easily will have hundreds of pages that all need to be internally linked properly.

DoFollow Links

It’s important to note that by default in Webflow all links are dofollow. This means that you are asking crawlers to pass PageRank authority to pages you link to.

PageRank

Internal links pass authority (also known as PageRank).

Example: your page X internally links to 5 other pages on your website and some other website links to page X.

Well, now those 5 pages are also getting some SEO benefits from that! Those benefits usually mean more trust and higher authority in the eyes of search engines.

Easier Crawling

Another huge advantage is that crawlers can crawl websites faster and better understand your website structure if the pages are properly linked together.

Slow indexing usually happens because of either bad website performance or improper internal linking structure.

That’s because crawlers will follow each link they find. And if there are no links, crawlers will need to go back, instead of going forwards.

Semantic Context and Relevance

After 2018 when BERT was introduced by Google, search engine robots became much more intelligent when it comes to understanding semantic meaning.

Before that, adding more keywords was the best way to make sure that your page is optimized for SEO.

Now, we all live in the age of semantic SEO. More keywords don’t mean better content like they did in the past.

A more helpful web page for the user means better content.

And what is more helpful for the user than linking to all the relevant sources or more in-depth explanations whenever it makes sense?

But guess what, to link to those sources internally - you need to have those sources on your website!

This means that search engines no longer compare just one page on your site against another page on another site.

Search engines now compare one page and your whole site against another site with a similar page.

That’s why it’s important to plan websites in content clusters if you want to rank on search engines.

Internal Linking Strategy

Having an internal linking strategy helps you to grow websites in a way that will keep your website the most relevant and helpful resource on a specific topic.

This is an actual example of each page that exists on our website, the bigger each bubble the more internal links we have to it.

And here are the same internal links on our website in 2D.

These graphs explain why planning your internal links and maintaining them is so important.

As the site grows, we have to maintain a sitemap hierarchy that is understandable both for the user and for crawlers.

What is an Internal Linking Strategy?

An internal linking strategy aims to create and maintain internal linking structures on your site.

This means that you need to have internal linking in place that will:

• Leave no orphan pages during site expansion
• Make each web page reachable with 3 or fewer clicks from the homepage
• Contextually link together relevant resources on the same topic
• Create the best user navigation experience possible
• Make it easier for crawlers to crawl and index your website
• Provide as much context about page relationships as possible
• Maintain a clear hierarchy between the most important and less relevant pages

To make this simple, to have an internal linking strategy, you need to spend time and effort on internally linking pages together.

New page published?

Link to that new page on other pages that already exist on your site.

And link from your new page to your old ones!

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean, linking to everything. This means linking to everything that could be helpful for page visitors.

Topical Authority

Internal linking can help not only with crawling and navigation, but also with your topical authority and even E.E.A.T..

This means that to utilize the best internal linking SEO strategy, you should understand your website. Each topic has to be internally linked in a way that shows authority and covers the topic completely.

Content strategists call this topic clusters, hubs, or hub and spoke.

You should also understand factors that are outside your website, such as planning keywords, understanding search intent, and topical SEO.

Note: If you want to learn more about each of these concepts, click on the contextual links above. Pun intended!

Topical Clusters

Topical clusters (or content clusters, hubs, categories) create parts of your site that cover specific topics completely.

They consist of:

• Main page (hub or pillar page)
• Supporting pages (subtopic or long tail “spoke” pages)

That’s why it’s sometimes called the hub and spoke method.

It goes something like this…

The main page links to all supporting pages or other main pages.

All supporting pages link back to the main topic page and any other supporting pages.

Here’s a visual representation of a topic cluster:

A common misconception is that only blog posts and similar article format content require topical clustering.

No!

To successfully rank websites you will need to create topical clusters even for:

• Services or features
• Products and product categories
• Any other type of content

And yes, all these pages will need to have helpful and search-intent-optimized content to rank.

Remember, pages also rank based on related supporting pages.

And based on how many other pages link to them (internally and externally).

Think of your web pages like this:

Anchor Text and Keywords

To contextually interlink supporting pages and your main page, you will need to use link anchors.

The link anchor is the highlighted text that will lead users to another URL if you click it.

Anchor text should have keywords you want to rank for, but still remain natural and don’t break the readability flow.

And yes, you should use keywords you want to rank for, but without spamming. Contextual links need to be organic.

Here’s an example of natural contextual linking:

To become an actual master of internal linking you will also need to understand search intent, thin content, heading structuring, and content planning basics.

The sentence flows naturally, and the links don't feel forced.

You didn’t see any keyword stuffing, just links that might help you dive deeper into the topic!

How Many Internal Links Should You Add to Your Page?

You should add as many internal links on your page as it makes sense.

You shouldn’t link to everything.

Only to everything that makes it easier to take your point across and could be helpful for website visitors.

In short, link internally whenever you have something relevant to link to.

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