Internal links are linking one piece of content to a relevant other piece of content.
When put like that, it sounds simple and therefore something that can safely be automated, but that’s not true.
Internal linking shows the search engines how much you care about your site and how much effort you have put into curating your content for your visitors.
Linking internally from every page or post to loosely-connected content may get you some internal links, but it doesn’t help anyone; what’s more, it damages your on-page SEO.
What is an internal link?
This is an internal link. (Don’t click it; it will return you to our homepage).
Another example of an SEO-optimised internal link is: How to get the best from your on-page SEO. This link tells you what WILO can do for your site’s SEO and how it can improve it.
So internal links, if you had not already guessed, do what they say on the tin, but the first example has no meaningful anchor text (the text that is linked) and no real context (the words before and after the link).
The second example has some context before and after the link, and the link text is optimised for the page it’s linking to.
The context is:
- SEO-optimised internal link before the link
- How to get the best from your on-page SEO as the anchor (link) text
- What WILO can do for your site’s SEO and how it can improve it after the link
This is a basic example, but you get the general idea.
Choosing your anchor texts.
It’s not enough to randomly internal link; you need to consider the link texts that you use for the links themselves.
Depending on how deep you want to dive into the world of SEO, you can make decisions about these links in a few ways.
Use your common sense.
You know your products or services, so when choosing the text you want to link, just use your common sense – you’ll inherently know what will make a sensible anchor text, so go with your gut and use WILO to search your content for these terms.
Use an SEO tool.
I also suggest using something like Ahrefs to check the keywords your landing page already ranks for.
Specifically, look at the keywords outside the top ten, and then weave these keywords into your internal links.
The idea here is that Google (et al.) already likes your content for that keyword, but not enough to rank it in the top ten. So, when you start using these lower-ranking terms as keywords to link internally to the page, it can give everything a boost (it sounds too simple, but try it; it works).
Whatever you use, make sure your links are curated.
This is where WILO comes into play: once you have created all your links, you can use WILO to check that the anchor texts for all the incoming links contain a broad range of keywords and phrases that support the page they are linking to.
Link juice.
The other thing to consider carefully when internal linking is the value of the link, or the Link Juice.
If you have 1000 words on a blog and one link from that blog to a landing page, 100% of the link juice is passed via that link.
The more links on the page, the more diluted the link juice becomes (it is shared across all the links).
We all know that we also need to link externally to authoritative sites that support our content, and while an external link does dilute link juice, it more than makes up for it with the external link.
Personally, I advise keeping your Link Juice as concentrated as possible and your content laser-focused. For each blog post, one internal link and one external link should be in the main content.
A 100-watt lightbulb will light up a room, a 100-watt laser will cut through sheet steel: that’s why you want to focus your content and your links like a laser, the more focused, the more powerful the effect.
Rewriting your content.
If you have many blogs with random internal links, be prepared to invest time rewriting parts of each blog to improve the context (before and after link text) and the anchor text (the linked part), as this will significantly improve your on-page SEO.
There is no quick fix for this. I often get asked why a site is not ranking despite having lots of great content, and the simple answer is that internal links and their context are often an afterthought and either automated or rushed. No part of this can be rushed or automated; you have to do it carefully and carefully (the search engines will note this).
Inject some personality.
With the rise of AI-generated content, this is more important than ever.
Don’t write dull, corporate-speak drivel; write with personality, experience, and conviction. Google wants to know there is a person behind this content, not a machine.
It doesn’t matter what niche you write for; you can still get some of your ideas. Obviously, the type of niche does somewhat dictate what you can write – for example, if you are writing YMYL content, you should not be flippant or share too many opinions as facts and credible information is required there.
Remember that people connect emotionally with copy and make purchasing decisions based on an emotional connection that is then justified later on with logic, so if you are boring, you will not entice anyone.
When writing copy, write like you are talking to one person, not presenting a speech to a large audience – this simple trick will make you write differently.
Give it time.
Good SEO takes time, so once you have made the alterations to your internal links, give the search engines some time to catch up with what you have done and do what they do.
Ideally, you should invest in a tool to track your keywords; this is a must.
Google Analytics won’t tell you anything here, and Search Console will give you too much data to pick through, so invest in Ahrefs or SE Ranking to track your ranking positions over time to see how your work improves your SEO.
Another tip is not to do too much all at once: pick a few critical pages, optimise the internal links for them and then give it a couple of weeks to see the improvement (this is why you need a tool that shows you where you rank today, last week and last month).
Don’t underestimate the most overlooked aspect of on-page SEO.
I’ve seen huge improvements across sites where I have implemented this strategy—it’s easy to do, quick to show results, and very easy to overlook. If you are in a competitive niche, improving your internal linking can give your site the boost it needs to rank higher in the search results.
Here’s what we did for this page.
This is the basic internal linking optimisation for this site – WILO is not a huge site, so we don’t need that many internal links, but as the site grows, the WILO plugin will help us find new internal links.
If you’d rather hand this job over to the pros, contact me, and we can discuss how I can improve your internal linking structure.
