Internal links and the structure of your site

Module 7: Content that gets found · Reading time: 11 minutes

Learning objective: After this lesson you can plan a logical structure for your site, create internal links with good anchor text, and track down broken links and orphan pages.

Key concepts: site structure, main menu, breadcrumb, internal link, anchor text (link text), generic anchor text ("click here", "read more"), alt text as anchor text for an image, <a href>, broken link, link to a redirect, orphan page, flat structure, nofollow on your own links

Why internal links matter

A search engine finds pages mainly by following links (lesson 1.2). If no link at all points to a page, it can only find that page through the sitemap, and even then it still doesn't know how the page relates to the rest of your site. Google puts it simply: every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.

Internal links do three things at once:

Make pages findable: the crawler reaches the page through the link.
Explain: the link text tells readers and search engines what the page is about.
Show importance: pages that many of your own pages link to are clearly important within your site. Google describes links as a signal in its explanation of ranking; exactly how much weight internal links carry, Google doesn't say.

A logical structure

Google writes in its SEO Starter Guide that good organisation helps search engines and users understand how your pages fit together. For a small site, that isn't complicated:

Home
├── Bruidsbloemen        (/bruidsbloemen)
├── Rouwbloemen          (/rouwbloemen)
├── Bezorgen             (/bezorgen)
├── Blog                 (/blog)
│   ├── Tulpen langer mooi   (/blog/tulpen-langer-mooi)
│   └── Tekst op een rouwlint (/blog/tekst-rouwlint)
└── Contact              (/contact)

Rules of thumb:

Flat structure. Every important page is within two or three clicks of the homepage. Pages tucked away deep down are found less often, by visitors and crawlers alike.
The menu holds your main topics, not everything. Seven clear menu items work better than thirty.
Addresses that follow the structure, with words that mean something: /blog/tekst-rouwlint says more than /?p=123. Google calls words in the address that are useful to users a good idea.
A breadcrumb such as "Home > Blog > Text for a funeral ribbon" shows where a page sits in the structure. According to Google, a breadcrumb can help users understand and explore a site. You can also mark it up as structured data (module 5).

Good anchor text

The anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. Google describes good anchor text as descriptive, reasonably short and relevant to the page it's on. Google itself names "Click here" and "Read more" as bad examples.

Poor	Better
For funeral flowers, `klik hier` (click here).	See our `rouwbloemen en rouwstukken` (funeral flowers and arrangements).
`Lees meer` (read more)	`Lees hoe je tulpen langer mooi houdt` (read how to keep tulips looking good for longer)
`https://www.example.com/bezorgen`	`bezorgen op zondag` (Sunday delivery)
`rouwbloemen amersfoort goedkoop bestellen rouwboeket`	`rouwbloemen bestellen` (order funeral flowers)

A handy test from Google: read only the anchor text, without the sentence around it. Do you understand where the link goes? If not, make it more descriptive. But don't stuff it with a string of keywords: that's just as unpleasant for readers.

Two technical points:

A link must be a real link. In general, Google can only follow a link if it's an <a> element with an href, such as <a href="/rouwbloemen">rouwbloemen</a>. A button that only jumps to another page with JavaScript, without an href, can't be followed reliably by Google.
An image used as a link has no text. Google then uses the image's alt text as the anchor text. A logo that links to the homepage should therefore get something like alt="Bloemenatelier Lotte, naar de homepage". An image link without alt text is a link without text.

Where do you put internal links?

In the text itself, where they help the reader further: in the article about the funeral ribbon, a link to the funeral flowers page, and the other way round.
From informational to transactional: someone reading how to care for tulips may be ready to order tulips. A link helps.
From your strongest pages to pages that deserve more attention. The homepage is usually your strongest page.
Don't overdo it. Google says there's no ideal number of links per page, and that if you think it's too many, it probably is.

Don't use rel="nofollow" on links to your own pages. That value is meant for links you don't want to vouch for (lesson 7.5). If you don't want one of your own pages in Google, set it to noindex (lesson 1.3).

Broken links, redirects and orphans

Broken link: a link to a page that no longer exists (404 or 410), or to a page that returns a server error (5xx). For a visitor, it's a dead end. Fix the link or redirect the old address.
Link to a redirect: after a move or new addresses (lesson 8.3), your menu and texts often still contain old addresses that redirect. That works, but it costs an extra step. Update the link to the new address.
Orphan page: a page that no internal link points to at all. Often an old promotion page, or a page you forgot to add to the menu. Decide: link it (from a suitable page), merge it, or remove it.

Find them with the exercise below (homepage), with Search Console (the Page indexing report, lesson 2.4, shows 404 errors) and, for a whole site, with a free crawler or a link checker plugin.

In practice: menu and links in your website builder

In the AI Builder you set up the menu via Menu in the left-hand bar and create links in texts in the editor; in WordPress via Appearance > Menus (or the site editor with a block theme) and the link button in the block editor. Other website builders work in a similar way. After changing a page address, always check that menu items and links in texts have changed along with it.

Summary

Every important page should have a link from at least one other page on your site.
Keep the structure flat and logical, with meaningful addresses and, if you like, a breadcrumb.
Anchor text is descriptive and short; "click here" and "read more" say nothing. For an image link, the alt text counts.
Clean up broken links, links to redirects and orphan pages. No nofollow on your own links.

Quiz

Exercise

Exercise A7.4: Internal links on your homepage. Enter the address of your homepage. The program reads the homepage the way a search engine does, counts the links to your own site, looks for empty and meaningless anchor texts and image links without alt text, and checks up to fifteen of those links: do they work, or do they point to a redirect or an error page? No site of your own? Use www.rijksoverheid.nl.

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