Term
Internal Linking
Links between pages on the same domain. Internal linking shapes crawl paths, distributes link equity, and signals topical relevance to search engines.
Internal Linking — explained in more detail
Internal links serve three jobs at once: guiding users through the site, handing crawlers traversal paths, and distributing the ranking signal (“link equity”) a page accumulates. Pages that are heavily linked from inside the site usually rank better, because Google assigns them more importance.
Three levers for good internal linking: anchor text (descriptive, not “click here”), link depth (important pages within ≤ 3 clicks of the homepage), topical clusters (pillar page → detail pages → back to the pillar).
Example / In practice
Concrete moves: build topic hubs as pillar pages, link from them to detail articles, link the detail articles back to the hub and across to sibling articles. Breadcrumbs add an extra link layer. “Related posts” modules sorted by topic, not date.
Distinction from similar terms
Backlinks are incoming links from other domains — they bank external trust. Internal linking is fully under your control and by far the easiest signal to manage: no outreach, no third-party dependency.
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Content Hub
Central overview page for a topic area that bundles many detail articles — a variant of the topic cluster model, often with a stronger focus on navigation and filtering rather than a linear pillar page.
LexikonOptimizing Internal Linking
How internal links distribute link equity, how click depth and anchor text work — and how to deliberately strengthen key target pages.
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