What is Interlinking?

Interlinking is the practice of linking one page on your website to another page on the same site. SEOs also call it internal linking, and the two names describe the same practice.

Every internal link does two jobs at once. It shows Google how your pages connect, and it gives the reader more context to the post they’re on using anchor text to describe the site they would go to if they clicked it.

What interlinking does for your rankings

Googlebot finds new pages by following links from pages it already knows. Pages with zero internal links are orphans. Orphans can sit unindexed for months (I’ve watched one sit for a year).

Google’s own link guidelines name internal links as a primary way its crawler finds content.

Authority moves through links too. A blog post that has earned backlinks from other sites passes part of that strength to every page it links to. Point that post at your service page and the service page inherits some of its ranking power.

Then there’s the topical read. A cluster of dental implant pages that all link to each other reads as one connected subject. Google ranks connected subjects above scattered one-off posts.

The reader path is the part agencies skip. A patient who lands on “signs you need a root canal” wants the booking page within two clicks.

What happens without that link? The patient closes the tab and calls whichever practice ranks next.

Why Internal Linking Matters for SEO

The 9 interlinking rules I hold every internal link to

1. Link where the reader would go next. A post about dental pain earns a link to your root canal page. Would a real reader click this?
2. Describe the target page in the anchor. The clickable words should tell the reader where the link goes before they click. Read up on what anchor text is and why Google weighs it so heavily.
3. Vary the anchor across pages. Thirty pages all linking “dental implants Atlanta” to one page looks rigged, and Google treats it that way. Rotate the phrasing from page to page.
4. One link per target URL per page. A second link to the same URL adds nothing for the reader and nothing for the crawler. I remove duplicates on every audit I run.
5. Point most links at the pages that book patients. Blog posts send authority to service pages. The count of internal links a page receives tells Googlebot how much that page matters to you.
6. Put links on words. An image link carries no anchor beyond its alt attribute, so it passes a weaker relevance vote.
7. Keep internal links dofollow. Adding nofollow to your own links throws away authority you already own (WordPress leaves them dofollow by default, so there’s nothing to change).
8. Check every link’s target before you publish. A link that lands on a 404 wastes crawl budget, burns reader trust, and passes nothing. Recheck after a migration.

Internal Linking for Healthcare Sites: Practical Application

Internal linking works alongside keyword mapping to show Google which pages matter. If a page still doesn’t rank after publishing, use our guide to pages that won’t rank to check indexing, internal links, speed, and intent.

How many internal links should a page have?

Google’s link guidelines say there’s no ideal number, and I believe them. My working cap is still 3 per 1,000 words of body copy.

Past that point, each added link spreads the page’s authority thinner and the copy starts reading like a directory. A directory nobody reads.

A handful of relevant links outperforms a page stuffed with weak ones on every audit I’ve run.