Ready to grow?Short answer: An internal link is a link from one page on your website to another page on the same site, like a bakery post linking "order a wedding cake" to its order page. Internal links do two jobs: they walk visitors toward the page where they book or buy, and they help Google find and rank those pages.
That is the whole idea. Now let's make it useful.
So what counts as an internal link, and what doesn't?
Picture your website as a small building. Every page is a room. An internal link is a doorway between two of your own rooms. Click it, and you move from your blog post to your services page without ever leaving your site.
An external link is different. That is a doorway that leads outside, to somebody else's building. If your bakery post links to a flour supplier's website, that is external. This guide is only about the doorways inside your own walls, the ones you fully control.
You already make these links without thinking about it. The menu at the top of your site is a row of internal links. So is the "Contact us" line in your footer. What most owners miss is the chance to add a few more, on purpose, in the exact spot where they help.
If you want the bigger picture of how one page gets optimized, the basics of on-page SEO covers the full checklist. This piece zooms all the way in on one part of it: the links between your pages.
Why two linked pages matter more than one page alone
Here is what a single link is quietly doing behind the scenes.
Google finds new pages by following links. In its own documentation on links, Google says plainly that "Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl." Read that twice. The links between your own pages are how Google discovers them and decides how they connect.
There is a rule that follows from this, and Google states it directly: "Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site." A page nobody links to is a room with no doorway. Google can miss it entirely, which means nobody searching ever finds it.
John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate, put it in one line when quoted in Yoast's internal linking guide. Internal linking, he said, is "one of the biggest things that you can do on a website to kind of guide Google and guide visitors to the pages that you think are important." Guide Google, and guide visitors. Same tool, both jobs.
The second job is the one you feel in your bank account. A link doesn't just help a crawler. It takes a real person who is reading and gently points them at the next step.
Follow the bride: one bakery example, start to finish
A wedding-cake baker writes a blog post called "5 wedding cake ideas for a small spring wedding." Good post. It brings in brides who are searching for inspiration.
But inspiration is not an order. A bride finishes reading, feels excited, and then closes the tab because there was nowhere obvious to go next. The post did its job and still lost the sale.
Now add one line. Inside the post, the baker links the words "order a wedding cake" straight to the order page. Nothing else changes. The bride reading for ideas is now one click from actually buying, at the exact moment she is most interested.
That single doorway does two things. The bride has a clear next step. And Google sees the "ideas" post and the "order" page as connected, which helps the order page get found and understood. One link. Two wins.
Write anchor text that describes the page, not "click here"
Anchor text is the visible words you turn into a link. In the bakery example, the anchor text is "order a wedding cake." That matters more than it looks.
Google's guidance is short and clear: good anchor text "is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant." Then it names the ones to avoid. Google lists "Click here," "Read more," and a bare "website" as bad, too-generic examples, because they tell the reader and Google nothing about where the link goes.
So compare these two:
- Weak: "To order, click here."
- Strong: "You can order a wedding cake in about two minutes."
Same link. The second one describes the destination, so a skimming reader knows exactly what they'll get, and Google gets a clean signal about what that page is. When you're deciding what words to link, describe the room you're sending people to. If you write your own posts, our guide to writing a blog post shows where these links fit naturally into a draft.
Point your links at the pages that make you money
Most owners, once they get the idea, start linking to whatever is nearby. Slow down and aim.
Your best internal links should point at the handful of pages that actually win customers: your booking page, your order page, your contact page, and your top two or three service pages. Those are the rooms where a visitor becomes a paying customer. Every blog post you write is a chance to walk someone one step closer to them.
There is an SEO reason too. Yoast's internal linking guide explains that links pass "link equity," a kind of SEO value, between your pages. Your homepage usually carries the most of it because it is the most linked-to page you own. When you link from a strong page to a newer or important page, Yoast notes, it "helps those pages rank better." That is a gift for a booking page, which rarely earns links from other websites on its own. Your popular blog post can lend it a hand.
Don't chain links together or stuff in keywords
You can overdo this. The fix is to link when it genuinely helps the reader, and stop there.
Google is direct about two mistakes. First, keyword cramming: "resist the urge to cram every keyword" into your link text, because "keyword stuffing is a violation of our spam policies." You do not need to force "best custom wedding cake bakery near me" into an anchor. "Order a wedding cake" is plenty.
Second, chaining. Google says "Don't chain up links next to each other," because a row of links jammed together makes it hard for a reader to tell one from the next. Spread your links out. Put them where a real person, mid-sentence, would actually want to go somewhere.
A simple gut check: read the sentence out loud. If the link feels like a natural offer of help, keep it. If it feels shoved in to hit a keyword, cut it.
Having done this work for owner-run shops, the pattern that repeats is almost always the same. It is never that the site has too few pages. It is that the good pages sit in isolation, each one a room with no doorway to the page that takes a booking. The owner has already written the thing that attracts people. They just never built the short walk from interest to action.
Where to actually add internal links on your site
You have four main places, and you probably already use two of them.
- Your menu and footer. These link every page to your core pages. Keep them clean and current.
- Your blog posts. This is the biggest missed opportunity. Every post should link to at least one money page and one or two related posts.
- Your service pages. Link related services to each other, and each one back to booking or contact.
- Your homepage. It carries the most value, so use it to point at your most important pages.
One reassuring technical note, because owners worry about this. Google can only count a link it can crawl, and it can generally only crawl a standard text link, the normal blue clickable words. In Google's words, "Most links in other formats won't be parsed and extracted by Google's crawlers." The good news: a plain text link in a blog post, a menu, or a button is exactly the kind Google reads. You do not need anything fancy. If your site's addresses themselves are a mess, tidying up your URLs helps every one of these links land cleaner.
Simple first steps you can do this week
You do not need a project. You need one link.
- Open your single most-read blog post.
- Find the sentence where a reader would naturally want to take action.
- Link a few descriptive words there straight to your booking, order, or contact page.
That's it. You just built one doorway from your most popular room to the room where people pay you. Do the same on your next post, and the one after. It compounds quietly.
Frequently asked questions
How many internal links should one page have?
There is no magic number. Link whenever it genuinely helps the reader reach a related page, and stop when it starts to feel forced. Google warns against cramming keywords and chaining links together, so quality beats quantity every time.
Do internal links help me show up on Google?
Yes. Google uses links to find new pages and to judge how your pages relate, and it says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. A page with no internal link pointing to it can be missed completely.
What is the difference between internal links and backlinks?
An internal link points from one of your pages to another page on your own site. A backlink is an external link, where another website points at you. They're different jobs. If you want the outside kind, how to earn backlinks covers it.
Are internal links the same as a sitemap?
No. A sitemap is a file that lists your pages for Google, while internal links are the actual paths woven through your pages that both people and Google follow. You want both. what a sitemap is explains that side.
Add one good link to your best post today, and you've done what John Mueller called one of the biggest things you can do on a website: pointed a real bride, and Google, straight at the page where the order happens. That is the entire method, and it is why Fonzy builds these links into your pages as it writes them, so the walk from interest to action is already there before you ever think about it.
