Internal linking is one of the few SEO tactics that is completely free, completely within your control, and consistently useful. It does not require anyone else’s help. You just write links into your own content.
What Internal Links Are
An internal link is a link from one page on your site to another page on your site. When you write a post about AdSense basics and you add a link to your post about ad placement, that is an internal link. This is different from a backlink, which comes from another website.
What Internal Links Do for SEO
Search engines use internal links to find and understand your pages. When Googlebot or Bingbot crawls your site, it follows links. A page that has no internal links pointing to it is much harder to find. A page that has several good internal links pointing to it gets crawled more often and is treated as more important.
This is called link equity. The authority and relevance signals of your site flow through links. A link from a strong page to a weaker page passes some of that strength along. If you have an article doing well in search and you add internal links from that article to a newer article, you are pointing some of that strength toward the newer one. Over time, the weaker article tends to rank better.
What Internal Links Do for Readers
Good internal links connect related ideas and help people find more content on a topic. If someone reads your article about Bing Webmaster Tools and there is a natural link to your article about why Bing traffic does not show up in Semrush, some of those readers will click it. They stay on your site longer. Pageviews per visit go up. Time on site goes up. These engagement metrics are signals that search engines look at.
A Simple System for Small Sites
You do not need a complicated strategy. When I write a new article, I think about what other articles on the site are closely related. I link to two or three of them from within the new article — not forced links that interrupt the reading flow, but genuine mentions where a link actually helps the reader.
Then I go back to a couple of older, stronger articles on the site and add links from those to the new article. Something natural — maybe a sentence that fits the topic, or a related reading mention near the end of the post. This tells search engines that the new article is connected to established content.
That is it. Two to three links out from new articles. Two to three links back from older articles to new ones. Done on the day of publishing or within a week of it.
What Anchor Text Means and Why It Matters
Anchor text is the clickable words you use for a link. Click here is bad anchor text because it tells search engines nothing about what the linked page is about. How to set up Bing Webmaster Tools is good anchor text because it describes the destination.
Use descriptive anchor text that reflects what the linked page is about. Do not stuff keywords in there — just be descriptive and natural. Natural language that describes the content you are linking to is correct 99% of the time.
Common Mistakes
Linking to your homepage from every article is not useful. The homepage usually does not need more link equity. Link to specific articles and pages.
Linking too many times from one article to the same destination does not multiply the benefit. One solid link from an article to another article is enough.
Start Small and Stay Consistent
The benefit of internal linking builds slowly. You will not see a dramatic ranking jump from one link. But a site where every article connects logically to other articles — where the content forms a web instead of a bunch of isolated posts — performs better over time than a site where every post is an island.
Write a new post. Add a few internal links. Go add links back from old posts to the new one. That is the whole practice. Do it every time you publish.