--- title: How Internal Links Help Your Website Show Up on Google | Blue Lake Web Design description: Learn how to link the pages on your small business website so Google and customers can find them. Plain steps, examples and common mistakes to avoid. url: https://bluelakewebdesign.com/internal-linking-for-seo/ --- How Internal Links Help Your Website Show Up on Google | Blue Lake Web Design - Call # How Internal Links Help Your Website Show Up on Google Learn how to link the pages on your small business website so Google and customers can find them. Plain steps, examples and common mistakes to avoid. Eric Plotts / November 10, 2026 Want this handled for you? Custom sites starting at $899. Most go live in about two weeks. Get a free quote Or call (248) 800-1855 Internal links are the links on your website that point to other pages on your own website. They help customers find what they need, and they help Google find and understand every page you have published. Done well, they are one of the simplest parts of search engine optimization (SEO), the work of making your site easier for Google to read. You can do most of it yourself, for free, in an afternoon. This guide is written for business owners who have never hired an SEO or run a campaign. It explains what internal links are, where to put them, how to word them, and what mistakes to avoid. Blue Lake Web Design Build a Website Google Can Navigate Blue Lake Web Design combines fast-loading website design with integrated SEO to help Michigan businesses improve online visibility. Explore website and SEO services ## TL;DR An internal link connects one page on your site to another page on your site. An external link points to a different website. - Every page you care about should be linked from at least one other page, and your most important pages should be easy to reach from the home page. - Write link text that tells the reader what they will find, such as “our 3-page website pricing”, not “click here”. - Add links by hand where they help the reader. More links is not better, and too many on one page makes each one less useful. - Check your links a few times a year for broken links and for pages that nothing links to. ## What internal links are and how they differ from external links A link is a piece of text or an image you click to go to another page. According to the web documentation from MDN, the Mozilla Developer Network , an internal link connects two pages that belong to the same website, and an external link goes from your page to someone else’s page. Here is a simple example for a Novi dentist: - On the home page, the words “teeth whitening” link to the dentist’s own whitening page. That is an internal link. - On the whitening page, a sentence links to a national dental association’s advice on tooth care. That is an external link. Search Engine Land’s guide to internal linking describes internal links as signals of structure and relevance within your own content. External links add outside context and can build trust, but they also invite readers to leave your site. Both have a place. This article is about the first kind, because you control it completely. ## Why internal links matter for Google and for customers There are two reasons, and the first one has nothing to do with Google. ### They help real people find things A visitor reading about your kitchen remodeling service may want to see your past projects, your pricing or your phone number. A link at the right moment saves them from hunting through a menu. Visitors who find what they want are more likely to call you. ### They help Google find and understand your pages Google discovers pages by following links, much like a person walking through a building by following signs. Google’s own documentation on links for Google Search says that every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. Links also tell Google which pages matter most. Google’s guidance on site structure explains that Google looks at the links between pages, and that the more links point to a page within a site, the more important that page appears relative to the others. That guidance is written for online stores, but the idea applies to any site. The words you use matter too. When a link says “emergency plumbing repair”, Google gets a clue about what the next page covers. The same idea of sending a visitor straight to the right place applies outside websites, for instance in deep linking for mobile apps . A fair note on expectations: links help Google understand your site, but no link arrangement can promise a particular spot in search results. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. ## How to organize your website so links make sense Before you add a single link, picture your site as a small tree. - The trunk is your home page. It introduces your business and points to your main services. - The branches are your main service pages. For a roofer, that might be roof repair, roof replacement and gutters. - The leaves are the detail pages. Think of a page about storm damage, a page about your service area, or a blog post answering a common question. This is often called site structure or site hierarchy. It is just a tidy way of grouping things so a visitor, and Google, can see what belongs together. ### Keep important pages close to the home page A common rule of thumb is that a visitor should reach any key page within about three clicks from the home page. Search Engine Land’s site structure guide recommends a shallow structure with clear grouping and puts higher value content higher in the hierarchy. Treat three clicks as a good target, not a strict law. Small business sites are usually small enough that this happens on its own, as long as your menu is clear. ### Use readable web addresses A web address is also called a URL (uniform resource locator). Google’s URL structure recommendations suggest descriptive addresses made of readable words, separated by hyphens. An address like yourbusiness.com/services/roof-repair tells both people and Google what to expect. Google also notes that it generally relies on the links between pages, not the address pattern, to work out how a site is organized, so the links still do the heavy lifting. ### Group related pages into topics Some people call a tightly grouped set of pages a “silo”. The idea is plain: pages about the same subject link to each other. If you run a landscaping company, your lawn care pages link to one another, and your patio pages link to one another. Search Engine Land cautions that walling groups off completely can backfire when related topics never link across groups. If your patio page and your lawn page genuinely relate, link them. For a small business, a simple version works well: one main page per service, with a few supporting pages or blog posts that link up to it and to each other. ## A simple internal linking plan for a small business You do not need special software. A spreadsheet, or even a sheet of paper, is enough. - List your pages. Write down every page on your site: home, services, about, contact, blog posts, location pages. - Pick your top three to five pages. These are the pages that bring in customers, usually your main services and your contact page. They are your priority pages. - Find the supporting pages. For each priority page, note which other pages relate to it. A blog post about “how much does a new furnace cost” supports your furnace installation page. - Add links from supporting pages to priority pages. Do this inside the body text, where it reads naturally. - Add a few links the other way. Your service page can point to a helpful article or to your portfolio. - Check that nothing is left out. Every page should have at least one link pointing to it from another page. Here is how that might look for a Michigan electrician: Page Where it should be linked from Panel upgrade service Home page menu, the blog post on warning signs of an old panel, the contact page Generator installation Home page menu, the blog post on preparing for winter outages Service area page for Southfield Footer, the about page, the main services page Contact page Every page through the menu, plus a link at the end of each service page ### How many links per page There is no magic number. Some SEO guides suggest a few contextual links per blog post, and others suggest more for long pages. What matters is whether each link helps the reader. MDN advises that when you build a website you should focus on internal links, since they make the site usable. It also warns that linking every page to every other page is counterproductive once a site grows past about ten pages. Washington State University’s web team makes a similar point: too many links on one page can dilute their value and make the page harder to use. A good test is to read the paragraph out loud. If the link would feel odd to a customer, leave it out. ## How to write link text that works The clickable words are called anchor text. Google’s documentation says good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably short, and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it points to. Compare these: Weak Better Click here See our website pricing Read more How to find the keywords your customers search for This page Our local SEO service Link Checklist for your robots.txt file A few habits make anchor text easier: - Say what the reader will get. Describe the destination in a few plain words. - Vary the wording. You do not need the exact same phrase every time. “Web design pricing” and “what a new website costs” can both point to the same page. - Skip stuffing. Cramming the same keyword into every link reads as unnatural to people. - Put important links in the main text. A link inside a sentence, near the top of the page, is usually more helpful than one tucked into a crowded footer. ## Mistakes to avoid These are the problems most small business sites run into. ### Pages that nothing links to A page with no links pointing to it is called an orphan page. Search Engine Land notes that orphan pages often are not crawled or indexed at all, which means Google may never see them. Old landing pages and forgotten blog posts are the usual culprits. ### Broken links A broken link leads to a “Page not found” message. It frustrates visitors and wastes the effort of everyone who linked there. When you delete or rename a page, update every link that pointed to it, and set up a redirect from the old address to the new one. This matters most during a redesign, and our guide on saving your search rankings during a website redesign walks through it. ### Links hidden from Google by accident Sometimes a site’s settings tell Google to stay out of whole sections. If Google is blocked, your links inside those pages cannot help. Our robots.txt launch checklist explains how to spot an accidental sitewide block before it costs you visitors. ### Too many links, or links in the wrong places A page crowded with dozens of links gives no signal about what matters. Keep the menu simple, and keep the footer short. Menus and footers are useful for visitors, but links placed naturally inside your writing usually say more about how two pages relate. ### Links that do not help the reader Adding a link only to send visitors to a page you want to push, with no connection to the sentence, feels forced. Link when a reader would genuinely want the next page. ## How to check your links a few times a year Set a reminder every three or four months and run through this short list: - Click through your menu and make sure every item still works. - Open your newest blog posts and confirm they link to at least one service page. - Look for pages nobody links to. Search for a page title on Google together with your site name, then check whether any other page of yours links to it. - Read your top service pages and ask: could a visitor get to the contact page and the pricing page from here in one click? - After any redesign, test the old addresses of your most visited pages to make sure they go somewhere useful. Free and paid website audit tools can list broken links and orphan pages for you, and they are worth using once your site passes a few dozen pages. For a ten page site, a careful afternoon is enough. ## Where internal links fit with the rest of your site Links work best on top of solid basics. A page that loads slowly, has a vague title or answers no real question will not be helped much by links alone. Our on-page SEO checklist covers the other items to check on each page, and our guide to fast local landing pages shows how to build pages for each town you serve. Two more pieces make your links more useful: - Pages worth linking to. If you do not yet know what your customers search for, start with our guide on finding the keywords your local customers use . Then look at evergreen content examples for small businesses for ideas on pages that stay useful for years. - Consistent business details. Links inside your site are one side of the story. The way your name, address and phone number appear across the web is the other, and local citations cover that. If you want to keep reading, our web design and SEO articles are collected in one place. And if you are wondering how long your own blog posts should be, see how long a blog post should be for SEO . ## Our point of view We have built websites in Novi, Michigan since 2011, and the same thing shows up again and again. Most small business sites do not have a link problem. They have a planning problem. Nobody decided which pages matter most, so nothing points to them. Our approach is to decide that before the first page is designed. We start with the handful of pages that bring in customers, such as your services and your contact page, and build the menu and the page links around them. SEO is part of the build, not something added later. This is why we like fixed-price websites with no contracts. A three page site or an eight page site is small enough that every page can be reached in a click or two and every page has a reason to exist. We would rather give you a clear structure you understand than a complicated one you have to pay someone to maintain. Our work describes what we do, not what it will achieve. We build the site so Google and your customers can find their way around. What happens in search results depends on many things outside any agency’s control. Eric Plotts ## Want help planning your website’s structure? If you would rather have someone else handle it, we build fast-loading websites with search optimization built in. Our three page website is $899 and our eight page website is $1,999. Anything larger gets a fixed quote, with no contracts and no hidden fees. A typical project takes about two weeks. See the details on our website design pricing page , or call us at (248) 800-1855. If you already have a site and want it reviewed, our Michigan SEO services include looking at how your pages connect. We serve Metro Detroit and Oakland County. ## FAQ ### What is the difference between internal and external links? An internal link goes from one page on your website to another page on the same website. An external link goes from your page to a different website. Internal links help visitors move around your site and help Google understand how your pages relate. External links point readers to outside sources for extra context. ### How many internal links should a page have? There is no official number. Aim for links that help the reader at the moment they need them, usually a few in the main text of a blog post, and more on a longer guide. If a page feels crowded with links, remove the ones a reader would not miss. ### Do I need a special tool to fix my internal links? For a small site, no. A list of your pages and an afternoon of clicking will find most problems. Audit tools can save time on larger sites, because they list broken links and pages with no links pointing to them automatically. ### Should I link to my contact page from every page? Yes, in a simple way. Your menu should already include it. On service pages, add a short line near the end that invites the reader to call or send a message, linking to the contact page in plain words such as “contact us for a quote”. ### What happens if I redesign my website and change the page addresses? Old links can break and visitors can land on “Page not found” messages. Plan the redesign so each old address redirects to the matching new page, and update the links inside your site. Our redesign planning guide explains the steps. ## Recommended - How Do I Optimize a Service Page for Google? - On Page SEO Checklist: 13 Checks for Search, AI, and Core Web Vitals - Audit First Website Redesign SEO: 30–90 Day Plan to Save Rankings - How to Find the Keywords Your Local Customers Search For Written by Eric Plotts Web designer and SEO consultant in Novi, Michigan. Building websites for small and mid sized businesses since 2011. More about Eric . Get started ## Want this handled for you? Call (248) 800-1855 for a free quote. Fixed price, no contract, and most sites are live in about two weeks. Start a Project Book 15 Minutes