Creating Internal Links

In the previous chapter, on SEO, we explain how important links are for SEO. The “easy” links that you can generate are from other pages on the sites that you maintain. Good links help readers. To do this, they appear where clarification is needed and the target of the link is obvious to the reader.

Adding links often feels like the magic solution for every problem, so instead of talking about where to add links, we’ll talk about frequent mistakes that writers make when adding internal links. Try to avoid these problems 🙂

Unclear anchor texts

The link’s anchor text (what people see before clicking on the link) needs to exactly say what the page is about. If the anchor text is very different from the page’s title, it’s probably wrong.

Bad link Good link
Click here to learn more. Need help replacing the filter? Read about vacuum maintenance.

Too many links on a page

The objective of linking to other pages is to help readers understand the material. You can’t include everything on the one page that you’re writing right now. In our vacuum example, you’ll probably want to have a page that explains how to assemble it, how to use it and how to maintain it. When you talk about using the vacuum cleaner and you describe troubleshooting problems, you’ll probably want to help readers reach the page about maintenance (where you teach how to clean or replace the filter). A link to the vacuum maintenance does the trick.

But think about pages that include links every 3 works (like Wikipedia content). These links have just turned from being useful to being a nuisance. Having too many links on a page causes a few problems:

  • The content is visually difficult to read, with so many words having “link styling”.
  • The reader’s attention keeps wandering off. Every link, even if not clicked, causes our mind to consider - what’s there, should I click on it?
  • It’s harder to notice and use the few links to actually useful resources.

As a rule of thumb, only link to what many readers will find useful often. If someone might, one day, maybe, need that information, don’t link.

Many pages have a goal - an action that you want readers to take. Think about the checkout page for an e-commerce website. You want visitors to enter their payment information and pay. Obviously, any link that will send visitors to any other page will reduce sales. The checkout page is an extreme example, but links easily distract from any other objective. A homepage with dozens of links will make it harder for a visitor to notice your “sign-up” button, even if you’ve styled it in bold red in the center of the page.

Your content should link to other content when these links truly help the reader understand the material. We’ll include a few examples:

A good link Example Why it’s useful
A link to the “terms and conditions” page from the checkout page. [ ] I’ve read and accepted the terms and conditions. Legally, your checkout must disclose the conditions under which clients are buying from you. Many times, these conditions take up a lot of space. So, linking to the terms and conditions from the checkout page is the best solution, which almost every e-commerce site uses.
A link to the full list of languages your tool translates between, appearing in the “features” page of your translation tool. We translate between 52 languages. Not everyone, but enough people will want to see if their language is supported.
A major feature, from your homepage. WPML’s Automatic Translation helps you translate at human quality and machine speed and cost. The homepage mentions a number of major features. It can’t provide all the details about each of them, so it links to the “marketing” page for each major feature.

Internal links accomplish two things for SEO:

  • They allow search engines to find (and thus index and include) the pages you’re linking to.
  • They signal the search engines which pages you consider to be the authoritative on your topics. If many of the pages on your site link to page X about a certain topic, it signals to Google that you consider page X to be the most relevant page for that topic.

If your site has multiple pages talking about the same topic, instead of excessive internal linking, consider unifying some of that content and dropping outdated content. You don’t need to work hard to signal to Google what’s the best page on your own site. Ideally, it will be just one page that addresses each topic.

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