How Many Internal Links Do Websites Need? – Growth Rocket

The Internet hosts many different types of websites, including social media platforms, news websites, auto parts stores, and more. Although these pages attract people with specific interests, they have several things in common, including links.

Websites can link to certain pages within them or on other websites. Take our blog, for example. Each article links to the web pages we think are relevant to the topic.

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We always include internal links to help our readers find what they need and build our website’s information hierarchy. Also, interlinking distributes authority among our web pages, improving their search engine rankings.

Does Your Website Need Lots of Internal Links?

Interlinking is undoubtedly great for SEO efforts. However, like in real life, it needs balance to work. Too many links can affect user experience and search rankings, after all.

So, how many internal links should be used per page for successful SEO? The answer is simple: You can add as many links as you want, but make sure they’re enough to keep your website visible to users.

Google & The Ideal Number of Internal Links

According to Moz, Google previously set a 100-link limit per web page that webmasters could follow or not. The company advised webmasters to add enough links to each page, but the number should be less than 100. Over time, though, Google removed this limit from its search guidelines, letting site owners use as many links as possible.

Several years after Google stopped telling website owners to use fewer than 100 links, Matt Cutts explained why the limit was established. He stated that Googlebot could index the first 100 kilobytes of pages, including links. This led Google to answer the question, “How many internal links are too many?” by setting the 100-link limit to help webmasters ensure fully indexed websites.

Since then, Googlebot has gotten better at indexing, prompting Google to do away with its under-100-links-per-page recommendation.

Why Shouldn’t You Use Too Many Internal Links?

While there’s no exact limit for the number of internal links a website should have, it’s possible to overuse them. You might face the following problems if you add too many internal links to your website.

Indexing Issues

Search engine crawlers, like Googlebot, might not index a website with too many internal links.

Normally, these bots search for links on pages and follow them to find other pages. However, when search engine crawlers visit a page with too many links, they may only follow some. As a result, the page might not be indexed, resulting in a loss of high rankings and organic traffic.

The best way to avoid such a scenario is to know how many links you add to each page. Your web pages can be indexed if they have enough internal links.

Diluted Link Equity

Too many internal links can also weaken link authority.

Linking involves two types of pages: source pages (pages with links) and destination pages (where the source pages link). A page containing excessive links has its authority spread across its destination pages, with these pages getting little of it.

Conversely, a reasonable number of links means each destination page gains more authority.

Creating Spam

If your website uses too many links, it creates spam. Websites producing spam may cram thousands of links into each page or, sometimes, feature more links than the actual content. The more links each page contains, the more spammy your website looks.

Page Maintenance Issues

Finally, a page with too many internal links can be difficult to maintain because the links can stop working.

Links directing to deleted pages or ones with new URLs become “dead links.” If you click one of these links, you’ll see a 404 error page, meaning the page it points to doesn’t exist anymore.

How to Build an Effective Interlinking Strategy

Interlinking can help your website rank higher on search engines and make navigating easier. Hence, building an effective interlinking strategy that follows these steps is important.

Create a Clear Site Structure

A site structure shows how your content is arranged and linked. Consider creating categories and a well-organized structure for easier navigation.

Semrush recommends organizing your website content using a pyramid structure. Your homepage or main pillar pages should be at the top of the pyramid, while your sub-categories or cluster pages should be in the middle. Finally, specific content pages should be at the bottom of the pyramid.

Screenshot from Semrush

Use Pillar Pages & Topic Clusters

You’re looking for customer relationship management (CRM) software. While browsing the search results, you see a company offering that tool. You visit its website and browse it until you find an in-depth guide to CRM software. The page you open is a pillar page about the topic, with links to pages on related topics called cluster pages.

By producing pillar pages, you build topic clusters or groups of related content while improving your site structure. Pillar pages are meant for broad, high-volume keywords (“CRM software”) and are, in our opinion, the top part of the marketing funnel. They discuss everything about a topic and attract people searching for information about it.

Meanwhile, topic clusters add more details to your pillar topic. For example, a general topic like CRM software could have clusters focused on how it works or other topics. Linking cluster pages to their pillar pages emphasizes their relevance to the main topic.

Identify Your Website’s Most Authoritative Pages

If your website has been around for a while, it may have high-authority pages. These pages have earned high-quality backlinks from other websites, making them authoritative and perfect for distributing link equity across the other pages on your site.

SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can help you identify your website’s most authoritative pages. Using these tools, find the pages that other websites have linked to and work on interlinking them to your main pages or sub-pages.

Choose the Right Anchor Text

If you’ve read articles from blogs or websites like Wikipedia, you’ve probably seen text in a different font color. Clicking on this text, called anchor text, takes you to another page within or out of a website.

Screenshot from 7 Tips for Effective Seasonal Marketing Campaigns

While you’re free to choose anchor text, you’d want each one to contain the right words or phrases. This way, users and search engines know what the linked page covers, and Google understands the connection between your source and destination pages.

Semrush describes SEO-friendly anchor text as brief, relevant, and optimized. Your anchor text should have five words or less, be clear enough for readers to understand, and match the topic it links to.

Other Best Interlinking Practices

• Link to new or low-performing content. Determine the best way to link these types of content to your existing pages. Two to three links per page will do.

• Add navigational and contextual links. Navigational links will always appear on your main menu at the top of your website or in the sidebar. Contextual links are found within a page’s content and direct you to related topics.

• Conduct internal link audits. Through these audits, you can:

• • Reduce excessive link counts.

• • Identify nofollow links and orphaned pages (pages without internal links pointing to them).

Get Great Results with Effective Interlinking

When you have a website, filling each page with plenty of links is tempting. However, this practice can make finding your brand on search engines challenging. A reasonable number of links per page ensures everyone sees your website when looking for it, plus they add authority to every page.

Need help improving your search performance? Contact Growth Rocket’s SEO experts today or visit our blog for more helpful guides.