Internal Linking
Internal linking means linking one page of your website to other pages on the same site. Google says it uses links to find new pages to crawl and to judge which pages are relevant. Its link guide adds that clear words on your internal links help people and Google make sense of your site and find more of it.
Source: Google Search Central, Link best practices for Google, checked October 29, 2026
What Internal Linking means for your business
The words you link matter. Google's tip is to read only the linked words, out of context, and see if you can tell what the page is about. "Click here" and "read more" fail that test. Cramming keywords into links fails too, and Google says keyword stuffing breaks its spam policies.
The link also has to be one Google can follow, which Google says generally means a standard HTML link with an address in it. There's no ideal number of links for a page, Google says.
Google's guide to AI Overviews and AI Mode still counts internal links that make content easy to find as worth doing there. We'd link each blog post and FAQ to the service it's about, using the words a buyer would use, and link the service pages back to the posts that explain them. If your blog gets read but your service pages don't, we'd link your posts to the pages buyers need.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited Yoast, Semrush, other SEO tool blogs and YouTube, not Google's link guide, and said internal links pass ranking power between pages, wording Google's guide doesn't use. ChatGPT gave a similar answer and cited no sources.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
Related terms in crawlers and technical access
Find out where your brand stands.
Tell us what you're trying to figure out. We'll get back to you within one business day with a time to talk.