What is internal linking?

Why it matters

Search engines follow links to find pages. A page with no internal links pointing to it may not be found at all, and the pages that receive the most internal links, from relevant places, tend to be treated as more important. For a local business, good internal linking connects service pages, area pages and proof such as case studies.

Principles

• Logical structure: homepage, main service pages, then detail and supporting pages, so every page is within a few clicks.
• Descriptive anchor text: “local SEO agency” is more useful than “click here”.
• Relevance: link where it helps the reader, not everywhere.
• Priority pages: send more links to the pages that bring enquiries.
• No orphans: every important page should be linked from at least one other page and from the sitemap.

How to improve it

1. Crawl your site and list pages with few or no internal links.
2. Identify your most valuable pages, such as services and contact.
3. Add contextual links from related content, using natural anchor text.
4. Group related pages into clusters around a main topic page.
5. Fix broken links and links pointing to redirects.

How Starboost handles it

We design the structure of service, area and glossary pages so that each links to the next logical step. This is part of our local SEO work.