Internal Linking
Internal linking is the practice of linking between the pages on your own website. These links help crawlers discover new content, distribute authority through the site, signal which pages matter most, and guide readers towards whatever they should read next.
Why it matters for your rankings
Internal links are the only ranking factor you control completely. You cannot make another site link to you, but you can decide today which of your pages receives authority from your strongest existing content.
They are also the most neglected. Sites spend heavily acquiring external links, then let that authority pool on a blog post that links nowhere useful. A single contextual link from a well-linked article to a commercial page frequently moves rankings within weeks, at no cost. Internal linking also determines what gets crawled at all: pages reachable only through search or a sitemap are effectively orphaned, and Google treats a page nothing links to as a page nobody considers important.
How to check it on your site
Find your strongest pages
In Ahrefs open Best by Links. These pages hold the most authority and should be linking to what you want to rank.
Locate orphan pages
Crawl the site and cross-reference against your sitemap. Anything in the sitemap with zero internal inlinks is orphaned.
Check inlink distribution
Screaming Frog reports inlinks per URL. Commercial pages with two internal links and blog posts with forty is a common inversion.
Write descriptive anchors
Link with wording that describes the destination rather than 'read more', so the link passes topical meaning.