What is an internal link?
An internal link is an HTML link that leads to a webpage on your website.
Why it’s important:
- Allows users to find relevant pages based on the page they’re on
- Defines your link architecture for search engines to understand what web pages are the most important and how they relate to each other
How To Do It
- Go into a page or posts visual editor and select a word, words, or image to be the placeholder for the link (in the case of word(s), the placeholder is called ‘anchor text’).
- Click on the chain link icon to add a link to your selected element
- Enter the URL that you’d like the hyperlink to link to. This can be a relative or absolute URL
An absolute URL includes the website’s domain, this can link to a page on your website or a page on someone else’s website. Examples are
A relative URL means that the link is relative to the website it’s placed on. These do not require a domain address. Examples are
- / (root page)
Using a relative URL such as /page will bring you to http://yourdomain.com/page meaning that /page on your website is different than /page on another website.
Getting Geeky – Advanced Tip:
- Internal links should be relevant. If the text is talking about car accidents then it makes sense to link to the car accident or personal injury page (the former is ideal) rather than a workers comp or the homepage.
- Internal links help define your website’s architecture. In other words, your internal links help users navigate to important pages and it helps crawlers understand how your web pages are connected. If your main practice area is personal injury and you have 3 subpages of car accident, slip & fall, and construction accident then the 3 subpages should link back to the personal injury page but not other PA’s such as criminal defense or family law.
- Using too many internal links
- Not defining a link structure to follow
- Overlinking to few pages
- While there’s no exact rule as to how often or how little you should use internal links, a good rule of thumb is 1 link for every 250 words. That does not mean within the body copy every 250 words there’s a link but for a page with 750 words, 3 internal links is acceptable.
- Internal links help boost pages that are buried within your website. A webpage with an URL of /practice-area/personal-injury/auto-accident/car-accident is seen as a less important page by default. Internal links help remedy this.
- Moz’s Guide to Internal Linking: https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
- SEW’s Guide: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2428041/internal-linking-for-seo-examples-and-best-practices
- Kissmetrics’ Guide: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/commandments-of-internal-linking/
- Wordstream’s Explanation of Anchor Text: http://www.wordstream.com/anchor-text