Internal linking — Links between your own pages

Linking from one page of your site to another, helping visitors and search engines find related content.

What it means

Internal linking means adding links from one page on your website to another page on the same website. Your menu, footer and the links inside your blog posts are all internal links. Unlike backlinks from other sites, internal links are fully in your control.

How it works

Search engines discover pages largely by following links. When Google crawls your homepage and finds links to your course pages, it can follow them and learn those pages exist. Internal links also pass some authority around your site, so a strong page can help a newer one. The anchor text you use tells Google what the linked page is about. A page with no internal links pointing to it, called an orphan page, is hard for both people and search engines to find.

A simple example

A Pune café has a blog post titled "Best filter coffee to try this monsoon". Inside the post, the owner links "our South Indian breakfast menu" to the menu page and "book a table for weekend brunch" to the reservations page. The menu page in turn links back to a post about how they source coffee beans from Coorg. A reader who arrived for the blog can easily wander to the menu and then make a booking.

Why it matters

Good internal linking helps new pages get discovered and indexed faster, spreads authority to your important pages, and keeps visitors exploring. It also shows search engines which pages you consider most important, because they get more links.

Beginner tips

Whenever you publish a new post, link to it from two or three older, related pages.
Use descriptive anchor text instead of "click here".
Link your most important pages, such as services or courses, from several relevant places.
Common mistake: stuffing dozens of links into one paragraph, which confuses readers rather than helping them.