Internal and external links can make or break SEO for a site. When done properly, they can help improve rankings massively. When done poorly, they can destroy your chances of ranking a site.
First off, let’s explain the difference between the two.
Internal Links
An internal link is any link that directs a visitor to another page within the same website.
Example
Say you are writing an article for the https://resume.co website. The article is titled ‘How to Make a Resume in 2024 [Writing Tips & Examples]” and has the following URL: https://resume.co/blog/how-to-write-a-resume.
When explaining to the reader how to write their resume, you will most likely mention concepts such as:
- resume layout
- font to use on a resume
- difference between a CV and a resume, and so on.
In 99% of cases, we will have already written, or we will in the future write another post covering such topics.
As a matter of fact, we have written those content pieces. Here they are:
https://resume.co/blog/resume-layout
https://resume.co/blog/best-font-for-resume
https://resume.co/blog/cv-vs-resume
So, when you add these links to the content piece you are writing, these are called internal links.
Why internal? Because they link to a page within the same domain (resume.co).
Why are Internal Links Important?
Internal links are important for 3 main reasons:
Improving the site’s structure – Imagine you create a website with 200 pages, but none of them link to each other. Google will need to find a way to crawl each page individually, and in most cases, it will fail to find all the pages.
Now imagine that every website in the world does this. Suddenly it starts becoming very expensive for Google to crawl all the pages, because it will need to ‘hunt’ for those pages, instead of being served the pages on a silver platter.
If the content we write for a specific client website is very well interlinked, then Google will only need to find a handful of pages to crawl, and then it can simply follow the internal links inside of those to find the rest of the pages.
Here’s how this would look in a visual representation:
[Insert diagram showing 5-10 pages individually published without internal links] & [diagram showing 5-10 pages, all interlinked from the main pillar page]
Providing contextual relevance
Creating Topical Silos/Increasing Topical Authority
Have you ever read Wikipedia? Ever gone down the rabbit hole of reading about Dogs on Wikipedia and then suddenly found yourself reading about the New Guinea Singing Dog, but then inside the article, they talk about the Glacial Period, which, of course, makes you click on Ice Age (not the movie 😀), and then you start reading about Earth, and then you just stop clicking cause which link would you even chose first out of the 50+ links?
Well, Wikipedia is likely one of the best examples of how internal linking is done.
Closely related entities are linked to each other and provide contextual information about one or more entities.
So, for example, in the context of Dogs, here is how Wikipedia provides full context on the topic.
They mention closely related entities to the Dog Entity.
- Species
- Dog breeds (the classification of dogs)
- Dog breeding (the action of breeding dogs)
- Extinct gray wolves (the origin of dogs, i.e: where they come from)
- Domesticated dogs (differentiator between wild dogs deriving from wolves and new dogs)
- Hunting dogs (different types of dogs by purpose)
- Guard dogs (different types of dogs by purpose)
- Police dogs (different types of dogs by purpose)
- Military dogs (different types of dogs by purpose)
- Therapy dogs (different types of dogs by purpose)
Then, if you continue reading further down, you will notice links to
- Canis (latin word for dog – also the name of the Dog’s genus)
- Genus (the taxonomical rank in biology – relates to Species above)
- Wolfs (animal that is part of the same genus as dog)
- Golden jackal (animal that is part of the same genus as dog)
All of these provide contextual relevance to the Taxonomy of Dog.
So, what does this teach us about internal linking? Are we supposed to cover every single bit of information, no matter how closely related to the topic it is?
Not really.
Wikipedia goes above and beyond with interlinking. In fact, we can even say that they are doing internal link stuffing, which doesn’t actually help SEO. They are adding so many internal links that are not necessarily always relevant.
You should NEVER add this many internal links in an SEO post.
However, Wikipedia does rank first if you type the word ‘Dog’ on Google. So, what exactly does this teach us?
This should teach you how to think when writing content in terms of interrelated entities. In other words, you need to put a break on your creative writer/editor brain, and focus more on the way an algorithm can recognize closely related entities.
Let’s take a more practical scenario related to a client project. Let’s continue with the resume niche.
Scenario
We want to write a new post on ‘How To Write a Resume’ or, we want to improve an existing post, by improving its contextual relevance.
In order to improve a post’s contextual relevance, three things must be done.
- Identify closely related entities
- Write relevant text in each section to provide textual relevance to the main entity and related entity
- Add an internal link to that related entity.
Keep in mind, that not every interrelated entity deserves a separate page and therefore an internal link. There are specific words which provide context to a paragraph, section or sub-section without necessitating an internal link.
For example, if you are mentioning what the best font to use on a resume is, you would add an internal link to ‘best fonts to use on a resume’, and then you would also mention that Arial or Helvetica are two of the best fonts to write your resume with. But you wouldn’t create a separate page for ‘Using Arial to write a resume’ or ‘Using Helvetica to write a resume’. Arial and Helvetica in this case, provide contextual meaning to the paragraph, which in turn mentions the relation between the ‘resume font’ entity and the ‘writing a resume’ entity.
They only provide additional context, they are not related entities per se.
Main Entity – the process of writing a resume
Related Entities
- Resume sections (when writing a resume, you will need to add different sections)
- Job title (a resume almost always contains a job title that one is applying for)
- Cover letter (a covert letter is usually attached to a resume)
- Resume builder (a builder can be used when writing a resume)
- Alternative to resume builders
- Word resume
- Google Docs resume
- Canva resume
- Resume format (writing a resume requires picking the right resume format)
- Reverse chronological format
- Functional resume format
- Combination resume format
- Resume layout (when writing a resume, you need to arrange the layout of the different sections)
- Resume font (need to pick a font in order to write a resume)
- Resume templates (picking a ready-made template can make writing a resume easier)
- Modern resume template
- artistic/creative resume template
- Minimalistic resume template
- Professional resume template
- IT resume template
- What to put on a resume
- Contact information (section of a resume that needs to be added when writing a resume)
- Resume headline (section of a resume that needs to be added when writing a resume)
- Resume summary (section of a resume that needs to be added when writing a resume)
- Work experience (section of a resume that needs to be added when writing a resume)
- Education on resume (section of a resume that needs to be added when writing a resume)
- Soft skills
- Hard skills
- Languages
- Hobbies and interests
- Certifications
- Awards
- Volunteering experience
- Projects
- Publications
- Internships
- Tailor your resume to your job (process of tailoring a resume when writing it)
- Resume examples (examples you can get inspiration from when writing your resume)
This is not an exhaustive list. You can probably add another 10-20 related entities to this page, because it’s a pillar page.
For each specific bullet point above, you can easily add an internal link to a page that covers that topic. In this specific example, the blog post itself will probably be 5000-6000 words long, so it’s not unusual for this page to have 30-40+ internal links.
In other cases, where content is around 2000-3000 words long, you can probably aim for 10-15 internal links. Of course, there are topics that might require more, and there are topics that are not tied to many entities, there requiring less internal links.
The goal of internal links here is to add more relevance to a page.
Crawl Depth
This concept is also known as reducing Crawl Depth. Crawl depth is the number of clicks a user (or Google) needs to perform in order to find a specific page on a website.
The optimal Crawl Depth number is a maximum of 3. So, if it takes Google more than 3 clicks to find any page on your site, it’s no good.
Reading resources on internal links:
The opposite of internal links is external links.
External links
An external link is any link that directs a visitor to another page on an entirely different domain/website.
Example
Let’s consider the same URL as before: https://resume.co/blog/how-to-write-a-resume.
In this post, we have added an external link to https://www.techtarget.com/searchhrsoftware/definition/applicant-tracking-system-ATS
This is an external link because it redirects the visitor to techtarget.com, which is an entirely different domain.
To recap, an internal link is a link that sends a visitor from a page on Domain A to another page on Domain A (same domain)
Whereas an external link is a link that sends a visitor from a page on Domain A to another page on Domain B (different domain).
Structure of Internal and External Links
Both internal and external links have a few elements in common.
Common elements:
- Http protocol
- Anchor text
The anchor text used is ‘applicant tracking systems (ATS)’.
Lesson’s Glossary
Crawl depth
Internal link
External link
Orphan page
Anchor text
Pillar page
Topical Authority
Contextual relevance
