How many internal links should a page have?

There is no magic number. Link wherever a reader would genuinely want to go next. On a typical small business page, a handful of contextual links in the body plus your normal navigation is plenty. If you are adding links just to hit a count, or every other sentence is a link, you have gone too far.

Does anchor text for internal links matter?

Yes. Anchor text tells both readers and search engines what the linked page is about. Use short, descriptive phrases that match the destination, like 'emergency dental appointments' rather than 'click here'. Vary it naturally across the site instead of repeating the exact same keyword phrase every time.

Should I link to my homepage from blog posts?

Your navigation and logo already link to the homepage on every page, so extra homepage links in body copy rarely add much. It is usually more useful to link blog posts to the specific service page they relate to. That sends readers and link signals to the page that actually converts.

What is an orphan page?

An orphan page is a page with no internal links pointing to it. Visitors cannot reach it by clicking around, and search engines may struggle to find it or may treat it as unimportant. Orphans often appear after a redesign or when old landing pages are forgotten. Every page you want ranked should be linked from somewhere relevant.

Internal linking: a practical guide for small sites

Internal links are the links from one page on your site to another. They help visitors find the next useful page, help search engines discover and understand your content, and signal which pages you consider most important. On a small site, getting them right is one of the cheapest SEO improvements you can make.

This guide covers how we plan internal links for small business sites, without spreadsheets of hundreds of rows or plugins that link everything automatically.

What internal links actually do

Internal links do three jobs at once.

They help people move through your site. A visitor reading about tooth pain probably wants to know whether you handle emergencies, how to book, and what it costs. Links to those pages keep them moving toward a decision.

They help search engines find pages. Crawlers follow links. A page that nothing links to is harder to discover and may be crawled less often. Google’s own guidance on crawlable links explains that links should be standard <a> elements with an href so they can be followed.

They pass context and importance. The pages you link to most, from relevant places, with clear anchor text, look more important than pages buried four clicks deep with vague links. Anchor text also tells search engines what the destination is about.

For a small site, the goal is not to manipulate any of this. It is simply to make sure your best pages are easy to reach and clearly described.

Start with your money pages

Before adding a single link, decide which pages matter most. On a typical local or small business site, these are:

Core service pages
Location pages (if you have genuinely useful ones)
The contact or booking page
A few cornerstone guides that answer major customer questions

These are your priority pages. Every internal linking decision should make them easier to reach and better described. Blog posts, news updates and minor pages exist partly to support them.

If you are not sure which services deserve their own pages, do that first. Our guide on keyword research for local businesses explains how to map each service to one page.

Build a simple hub and spoke structure

Small sites work well with a hub and spoke model:

Hub: a main service page, such as “Dental implants”
Spokes: supporting content, such as “How long do implants last”, “Implants vs bridges”, and “What to expect after implant surgery”

Each spoke links to the hub. The hub links out to each spoke where it is relevant. Spokes link to each other only where it genuinely helps the reader.

This does two things. It concentrates relevance on the hub page, which is the one you want ranked for the commercial term. And it gives readers a clear path from research to action.

You do not need a complex taxonomy. Three to five hubs, each with a handful of spokes, covers most small business sites.

Write anchor text that describes the destination

Anchor text is the clickable text in a link. Good anchor text is short, specific and honest about where the link goes.

Weak anchor	Better anchor	Why
click here	book an emergency appointment	Says what happens next
this page	our pricing for teeth whitening	Describes the destination
learn more	how the implant process works	Sets expectations
dentist dentist city best dentist	our general dentistry services	Reads naturally

A few rules of thumb:

Describe, do not stuff. Use words a reader would expect, not a string of keywords.
Vary it naturally. If ten pages link to your implants page, they do not all need the identical phrase.
Keep it short. A few words is usually enough. Linking a whole sentence dilutes the meaning.
Do not use the same anchor for two different pages. That confuses both readers and search engines about which page covers the topic.

Place links where readers need them

Not all links are equal. A link in the body of a relevant paragraph usually carries more weight with readers than the same link in a footer list of thirty items.

Good places for internal links:

In the first few paragraphs, when you mention a related service
At the point a question naturally comes up, such as “how much does this cost?”
In a short “related” block at the end of a post, limited to genuinely related pages
In breadcrumbs, which show the page’s position in the site and give a consistent path back up

Breadcrumbs are worth adding on any site with more than one level. They help visitors orient themselves, and with breadcrumb schema they can also appear in search results in place of a raw URL.

Navigation menus matter too, but keep them focused. A menu with every page on the site is hard to use and spreads importance thinly. Put your hubs in the menu and let the hubs link to the spokes.

Find and fix common problems

Internal linking problems on small sites tend to repeat. Here is what to look for.

Orphan pages

Pages with no internal links pointing to them. They often come from old landing pages, redesigns, or blog posts that were never linked. Fix them by linking from a relevant hub or post, or by removing and redirecting pages you no longer need.

Deep pages

Important pages that take many clicks to reach from the homepage. A good rule of thumb is that your priority pages should be reachable within about three clicks. If a core service sits under Services, then Category, then Subcategory, then the page, consider flattening.

Broken links

Links pointing to pages that return a 404 error. They waste a reader’s click and a crawler’s time. Check your site after any URL change, and use redirects when you move or rename a page.

Redirect chains

Internal links that point to an old URL, which redirects to a newer URL, which redirects again. Update the link to point straight to the final destination.

Links hidden in scripts

Links that only work through JavaScript click handlers, or that lack a real href, may not be followed by crawlers. Use normal HTML links for navigation.

A routine that keeps it tidy

Internal linking is not a one-time project. Every new page creates new opportunities. Here is a lightweight routine:

When you publish a new page, link to it from at least two relevant existing pages, and link from it to its hub.
When you publish a blog post, link to the service page it supports in the body, not just in a footer.
When you change a URL, add a redirect and update internal links that point to the old address.
Once a quarter, crawl the site and look for orphans, broken links and redirect chains.
Once a quarter, check your priority pages and make sure each one has several relevant internal links pointing to it.
When reviewing headings, confirm that the page structure makes sense on its own. Clear headings make it easier to place links in context. Our heading structure checker helps with this.

A free crawler, or the Links report in Google Search Console, is enough to run this routine on most small sites.

What not to do

A few habits cause more harm than good:

Automatic keyword linking plugins that turn every mention of a word into a link. They create awkward, repetitive links and often point to the wrong page.
Linking every page to every other page. If everything is linked, nothing stands out.
Sitewide footer links stuffed with keywords. They add clutter and rarely help.
Using nofollow on your own internal links to try to control how importance flows. It does not work the way people hope, and it can stop pages from being discovered. Just link to what is useful.

Where to start

Pick your three most important service pages. For each one, find two or three existing pages on your site that mention that service and add a descriptive link in the body. That small change, done carefully, often does more than any plugin.

If you want a full picture of your internal links, orphan pages and crawl issues, our SEO audit covers internal linking as part of the technical review. It comes with a prioritized list of fixes rather than a raw crawler export.