SEO Basics

Internal linking: the #1 SEO lever

Internal linking is the organization of links between your pages. It's the most underestimated SEO lever — and often the most effective.

⏱ 5 min read · Updated on 22 April 2026

Definition

Internal linking refers to all hyperlinks between pages on the same site. It is the #1 SEO "internal" lever according to RM Tech big data studies.

Why it's crucial

Good internal linking:

  • Distributes PageRank from popular pages to strategic pages
  • Helps Googlebot discover and index all your pages
  • Reduces depth of important pages (fewer clicks from homepage)
  • Diversifies anchor text toward your target pages

RM Tech thresholds

Incoming internal links Meaning
0 Orphan page — risk of not being indexed
1–9 Insufficient for a strategic page
≥ 10 Minimum target with diverse anchor texts

Anchor text

The anchor is the clickable text of a link. It communicates to Google the topic of the destination page. Diversifying anchors toward a strategic page improves its visibility on varied queries.

How to improve internal linking

  1. Identify pages with few incoming links (see LIP Pages and Orphans tabs)
  2. Add contextual links from your most visited pages toward these pages
  3. Use descriptive anchor texts (avoid "click here")
  4. Run a new crawl to validate the impact

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