Build an internal linking strategy

What this check does

Counts unique outbound links on the page that point to other URLs on the same registered domain. The check fails below five — a page with fewer is either orphaned, very thin, or has lost its in-template navigation.

Why it matters

Internal links do three things classic on-page SEO can’t:

• They distribute authority. PageRank still flows from page to page. A high-authority post that links to five sister pages passes a meaningful chunk of signal to each. A post that only links back to the homepage hoards it.
• They give Google more crawl paths. A new page nobody links to is a page Googlebot won’t find. Internal links are the cheapest way to get a fresh URL into the index in days instead of weeks.
• They define topic relationships for AI. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews use anchor text and link context to decide which pages on your site are most authoritative for a given query. A “Definitive guide to X” with no internal links into it from related posts reads as orphaned trivia.

How to fix it

Walk through your top 20 posts and link from each one to three or four related posts using descriptive anchor text — the exact phrase you’d want that destination to rank for.

Do:

<p>Once you've shipped <a href="/blog/canonical-tags/">canonical tags</a>,
the next stop is a <a href="/blog/clean-xml-sitemap/">clean XML sitemap</a>.</p>

Don’t:

<p>Once you've shipped canonical tags, the next stop is a clean XML sitemap.
<a href="/blog/clean-xml-sitemap/">Click here</a> to learn more.</p>

The “click here” anchor wastes a ranking signal. See Descriptive link text.

Hub-and-spoke pattern. Pick your most-trafficked or most-converting pages and make them hubs that link out to spoke posts on each subtopic. Each spoke links back to the hub. This is the “topic cluster” model Hubspot popularized.

Tools.

• Internal Link Juicer / Link Whisper (WordPress) — auto-suggest internal links as you write.
• Astro / Next.js — write a small build-time script that walks your content collection and warns on orphaned posts (zero inbound internal links).
• Screaming Frog → Crawl → Internal → “Inlinks” column. Sort ascending — anything at zero or one is orphaned.

Watch out for navigation-only counts. A sitewide nav with 30 links technically lifts every page’s count, but Google discounts boilerplate. Aim for at least 3–5 in-body links per page beyond the template.

Frequently asked questions

How many internal links is too many?

There’s no hard ceiling. Google retired the old “100 links per page” guideline years ago. The practical limit is editorial: each link should help the reader, not just stuff a keyword. If your post has 80 in-body links you’re probably keyword-stuffing.

Should I use nofollow on internal links?

No. nofollow blocks PageRank flow and is meant for untrusted user-generated content or paid placements, not your own navigation. Just leave internal links normal.

What about pagination, archive pages, and tag clouds?

These create thousands of low-value internal links that dilute crawl budget. Use rel="canonical" to point pagination at the first page, and consider noindex on tag and date archives unless they earn organic traffic.