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Internal linking for blogs: a practical guide

By Thomas Lovas Lokoy · Published 16 October 2026 · 7 min read

Close-up of linked metal chain
Photo: Chains Links by Leeroy · CC0

Internal linking is the cheapest improvement most blogs never make properly. Every link from one of your posts to another tells a reader where to go next and tells a search engine that the destination exists and what it is about. This guide covers what Google's own documentation says about internal links, how to decide which posts should link to which, how to write the link text, and a routine for fixing the links on a blog that has grown without a plan.

What Google's documentation actually says about internal links

Google's "Link best practices" page has a short section headed "Internal links: cross-reference your own content". Two sentences in it do most of the work:

"Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site."

"There's no magical ideal number of links a given page should contain."

The second is followed by a practical test that is worth keeping on a sticky note: "However, if you think it's too much, then it probably is." There is no target count, no ratio of links to words, and no formula. The page asks you to think about what other resources on your site would help a reader understand the page they are on, and to link to them in context.

The same page sets out the mechanical requirement: Google can only crawl a link reliably when it is an ordinary HTML anchor element with an href attribute. If your theme builds navigation from buttons or script handlers without a real href, those are not links as far as a crawler is concerned. This mostly matters for custom components, "related posts" widgets and menus.

Why internal linking matters for a blog in particular

A blog publishes in reverse date order. The newest post sits on the home page and the archive pushes everything else down, page by page. Without deliberate internal links, an excellent article from two years ago may be reachable only through page fourteen of the archive. That is bad for readers and gives a crawler very little reason to treat the post as important.

Internal links solve three separate problems:

  1. Discovery. A post with no links pointing at it is effectively an orphan. Google's line about every page you care about having at least one link is the minimum standard.
  2. Context. The words of the link, and the words around it, describe the destination. Google's page says so directly: "the words before and after links matter."
  3. Reader journeys. A reader who has just learned what a content funnel is will often want to know how to brief a writer for one stage of it. A link at that moment is a service, not a trick.

How to decide what to link to

The useful question is not "which pages do I want to rank?" but "what would this reader need next?". Work through it in this order.

1. Definitions and prerequisites

If a post uses a concept that another post explains in depth, link the first meaningful mention of it. A post on writing briefs that mentions funnel stages should link to the piece on content funnel stages for blog articles, rather than explaining the whole idea again in a paragraph.

2. The next step

Most practical posts end at the point where the reader has to do something else. That something else is often covered elsewhere on your blog. A post on researching keywords leads naturally to a post on briefing the writer; a post on drafting leads to a post on fact-checking an AI-written article. Put that link where the reader finishes the task, not in a list at the bottom that nobody reads.

3. Deeper treatment

When you summarise a subject in one paragraph and you have a full article on it, link the summary to the article. This is the pattern behind topic clusters, which the companion guide on topic clusters and pillar pages covers in detail.

4. Skip the rest

If a link would not help the reader on that page, leave it out. Linking every post to every other post produces the "too much" that Google's page warns about, and it dilutes the links that matter.

How to write internal link text

Google's starter guide defines it simply: "Link text (also known as anchor text) is the text part of a link that you can see." The link best practices page sets the standard: "Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it's on and to the page it links to."

In practice that means:

  • Describe the destination. "our guide to fact-checking an AI draft" says what the reader will find. "click here" and "read more" say nothing, and Google's page lists generic text of that kind as a bad example.
  • Keep it short. A few words to a short phrase. If the link text runs to a whole sentence, the important words get lost.
  • Use natural variation. You do not need the same exact phrase every time you link to a post. Writing to fit the sentence keeps the text readable and avoids repetition.
  • Do not stuff keywords. The anchor text section of Google's page is explicit: "keyword stuffing is a violation of our spam policies." A link that reads like a list of search terms is a warning sign to readers as well.
  • Do not run links together. The page also says: "Don't chain up links next to each other." Three links in a row with no prose between them give neither people nor crawlers much context.

Link to the right version of the page

If the same post is reachable at several addresses, for example with and without a trailing slash, or with tracking parameters, link to the one you consider definitive. Google's canonicalization documentation puts it plainly: "When linking within your site, link to the canonical URL rather than a duplicate URL." Internal links that point at a redirect also add a step for every reader and crawler; when you change a URL, update the internal links to the new address rather than relying on the redirect forever.

A routine for fixing internal links on an existing blog

Most blogs do not need a grand restructuring. They need a few hours of systematic work. This routine assumes you can export a list of your posts with their URLs.

  1. List every post you care about. Exclude thin announcements, expired offers and anything you would delete if you had the time.
  2. Find the orphans. For each post, count how many other posts link to it. A crawler tool, your CMS search, or a plain search of your exported content for the URL will do. Any post with zero inbound internal links is the first job.
  3. Give each orphan one or two contextual links. Find older posts that mention the orphan's subject and add a link at that mention. If no post mentions it, ask whether the orphan belongs on the blog at all.
  4. Check your most visited posts. Your best-read pages are where most readers start. Make sure each one links on to the next useful piece. The Performance report in Google Search Console shows clicks and impressions by page, which tells you which posts readers actually arrive on from search.
  5. Rewrite weak anchor text. Search your content for "click here", "this post", "read more" and bare URLs used as link text. Replace each with a description of the destination.
  6. Fix broken and redirected links. Any internal link that returns an error or bounces through a redirect should point straight at the live, canonical address.
  7. Add the habit to your publishing checklist. Every new post should link out to two or three older posts, and you should add a link from at least one older post back to the new one. The second half is the half most people forget, and it is the half that stops new posts from becoming orphans.

Common mistakes

  • Linking only from new posts to old ones. Old posts carry more history and are often better-read; link backwards as well as forwards.
  • Using nofollow on internal links. Google's page recommends nofollow only "when you don't trust the source". You trust your own site.
  • Treating links as a substitute for content. A link does not fix a post that does not answer the question. If a page is weak, rewriting it comes first; the guide on updating old blog posts covers how.

How to tell whether it worked

Google's starter guide is candid about timing: "Every change you make will take some time to be reflected on Google's end." It suggests that some changes take effect in hours and others take months, and that you should wait a few weeks before judging whether a change helped. Compare impressions and clicks for the posts you relinked over a period of several weeks, rather than checking the next morning.

The other measure is simpler: open a post as a reader and follow the links. If each one takes you somewhere you were glad to go, the linking is doing its job.

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