Internal Linking for Small Business Websites: A Simple System

Internal links are links from one page on your site to another. They help visitors find related information and help Google discover pages and understand which ones matter most. On small sites, internal linking is one of the few SEO tasks you control completely, needs no budget and often gets ignored.

Why internal links matter

• Discovery. Google finds most pages by following links. A page nothing links to (an “orphan page”) may be crawled rarely or not at all.
• Context. The text of a link tells Google and readers what the destination is about.
• Priority. Pages linked from your navigation and from many other pages are signalled as more important than pages buried four clicks deep.

Google’s guidance on crawlable links explains the technical side: use real <a href> links, not buttons or scripts that only work on click.

A simple system: hubs and spokes

Group your content into a few topics that match what you sell. Each topic gets one hub page (usually a service, category or product page) and several spoke pages (blog posts, FAQs, case studies) that answer narrower questions.

Example for an illustrative home-services company:

• Hub: /water-heaters/ (service page with what you install and repair, service area, contact).
• Spokes: “How long does a water heater last?”, “Tankless vs tank cost”, “Why is my water heater leaking?”.
• Each spoke links to the hub in its first few paragraphs and near the end. The hub links to every spoke in a “Helpful guides” section.
• Spokes link to each other only where the reader would genuinely want the other article.

Writing good anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable words. Describe the destination in plain language.

Vary the wording naturally. Using the exact same keyword-rich anchor on every link looks forced and does not help readers.

How many links?

There is no magic number. Add a link wherever a reader would reasonably want to go next. In a 1,000-word article, three to six contextual links to related pages is common, plus any links in your navigation and footer. Avoid long blocks of links at the bottom of every page that nobody reads.

Audit your internal links in an afternoon

1. List your most important pages: homepage, main services or categories, top products, contact.
2. For each, check it is reachable from the main menu or within two clicks of the homepage.
3. Open your sitemap and compare it with your navigation. Any page in the sitemap that no other page links to is an orphan; link it from a relevant hub or remove it if it is no longer useful.
4. In Google Search Console, open Links → Top linked pages (internal). If your best service page is near the bottom, add links to it from related posts.
5. Check for broken internal links (404s) with a crawler such as a free site-audit tool, and update them to the correct URL.

Mistakes to avoid

• Linking to redirected URLs instead of the final address, especially after a URL change or migration.
• Hiding important pages behind search boxes, filters or JavaScript-only menus.
• Linking every instance of a keyword in a post. One well-placed link per destination is enough.
• Using nofollow on internal links. It does not “save” anything and can stop Google from following links you want followed.

Where to start

Pick your single most valuable service or product page. Find three existing blog posts or pages that relate to it and add a descriptive link from each. Then make sure the page links back to them. Repeat for your next most important page. If you need new spoke content, our guide on finding blog topics customers search for helps you plan it.