Internal links: anchor text, placement and orphan pages

What internal links are

An internal link leads from one page of your website to another page of the same website: from a blog post to the matching service, from a product to its care guide, from the home page to the contact page. The clickable words are the anchor text. Links in the menu, in the footer and in the text itself are all internal links.

Why they matter

• For visitors: a good link answers the next question at the right moment and saves them a search.
• For search engines: Google uses links to find new pages to crawl and as a signal when it judges how relevant a page is.
• For your pages: according to Google, every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.

Descriptive anchor text

The anchor text tells people and Google something about the page behind the link. Google asks for text that is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both pages. Words like 'click here', 'read more' or 'article' say nothing. A simple test from Google: read only the link text, out of context. If it does not make sense on its own, make it more specific.

• Weak: 'For our prices, click here.' Better: 'All packages are in our price list', with 'price list' as the link.
• Weak: a whole sentence as the link. Better: the few words that name the target page.
• Weak: the same keyword in every link. Better: natural words that fit the sentence. Google counts keyword stuffing as a violation of its spam policies.

Link purpose and accessibility

People who use a screen reader often call up a list of all links on a page or jump from link to link. In such a list, ten links called 'read more' do not help. WCAG 2.2 asks at level A (success criterion 2.4.4) that the purpose of each link can be understood from the link text alone or together with its context, for example the sentence or list item it stands in. At level AAA (2.4.9) there must be a way to understand each link from its text alone. Link texts that make sense on their own work in both cases and help everyone who skims a page.

Where to place links

• In the text, where the topic comes up. Google recommends linking related pages in context, and the words before and after a link matter too.
• Not several links in a row. Google advises against chaining links next to each other, because readers can hardly tell them apart.
• As real HTML links: an a element with an href address. Google can reliably follow those. Links that only work through a script may not be found.
• For a linked image, Google uses the alt text of the image as the anchor text. Do not leave it empty.

How many links

Google says there is no ideal number of links per page, and adds: if you think it is too much, it probably is. From practice: a link should help the reader at exactly that point. A text in which every second phrase is a link is hard to read. Link each target page once per text, where it fits best. These are working rules, not rules of Google.

Orphan pages

An orphan page is a page that no other page of your website links to. Visitors only reach it through a search or a direct link. Since Google uses links to find pages, such a page depends on other ways, such as your sitemap. To find orphan pages, compare the list of all your pages, for example from the sitemap, with the pages that receive internal links. Then link each important page from at least one page on a related topic.

Find links with Do4U

The Internal links tool reads your text and a list of your pages or your sitemap. It suggests links with the anchor text, the target page, a short reason and the exact place in the text. Every anchor stands in your text exactly as written, never in a heading, in code or in an existing link, and every target is a page from your list. The AI only chooses among the candidates that the code found. You pick the suggestions you want and copy the text with the links as Markdown or HTML.

Do4U builds the draft, you check and decide. Read each suggestion: only you know whether a page really helps your readers at that point.