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What is the purpose of internal linking in SEO, and do outbound links help?

16 October 2026 · By John Carlsson

Internal linking helps search engines find your pages and understand how they relate. Google uses links as a relevancy signal and to discover pages to crawl, and recommends that every page you care about has a link from at least one other page on your site. Outbound links are fine where they help readers, but Google does not present them as a ranking shortcut.

Why do internal links matter to search engines?

Google's link best practices say it uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages, and to find new pages to crawl. Internal links are the links between pages on your own site, so they are one of the main ways Google discovers your content and understands how your pages relate to each other.

Google's advice is simple: every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. A page with no internal links pointing to it is harder for Google to find and harder for readers to reach. Google also suggests thinking about which other pages on your site would help a reader understand the page they are on, and linking to those in context. It says there is no magical ideal number of links.

How should you write internal links?

Two things matter most: the link format and the anchor text.

Google says it can only crawl your link if it is an a element with an href attribute. Links built from other elements, or that rely only on script events such as onclick, may not be followed reliably.

<!-- Crawlable -->
<a href="https://example.com/ghost-peppers">ghost peppers</a>

<!-- Not reliably crawlable -->
<span onclick="goTo('ghost-peppers')">ghost peppers</span>

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text. Google says good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to the page it is on. Avoid generic phrases such as click here, avoid empty links, and do not stuff keywords into anchors, which Google notes is a breach of its spam policies. For image links, the image alt text acts as the anchor text.

How can you track your internal links?

The Links report in Google Search Console is free and uses Google's own data. Its internal links section shows which of your pages are linked most from within your site. Select a URL in the Top internally linked pages table to see which of your other pages link to it. This is a quick way to spot important pages that receive few links.

Keep its limits in mind:

It is not a complete list of every link on your site, and some URLs are left out.
Tables show up to 1,000 rows.
Pages are grouped by canonical URL, and duplicate links from the same source to the same target are combined.
Links that have since been removed may still appear.
It does not show whether a link is nofollow.

The export from the report's landing page provides up to 100,000 rows, which helps with larger checks.

Does linking to other sites help SEO?

Linking out is a normal part of publishing. Google's link guidance says linking to other sites is not something to be scared of, and citing sources can help build trust with your readers. Google does not describe outbound links as a way to improve your own rankings, so add them where they genuinely help the reader.

The SEO Starter Guide asks you to make sure you trust a resource before linking to it. If you must link to a site you do not trust, add nofollow or a similar annotation. Google's page on qualifying outbound links explains which rel value to use:

Ordinary editorial links need no rel attribute.
rel="sponsored" for adverts and paid placements.
rel="ugc" for links in user content such as comments and forum posts.
rel="nofollow" when the others do not apply and you do not want your site associated with the linked page.

Google adds that you do not need nofollow on every external link, only where you do not trust the source.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

How many internal links should a page have?

Google does not give a number. Its link best practices say there is no magical ideal number of links, although if you think a page has too many, it probably does. The practical aim is that every page you care about is linked from at least one other page, and that each link points readers to something that helps them understand the topic.

Should internal links use nofollow?

Generally no. Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links says nofollow is for cases where you do not want your site associated with a linked page. For pages on your own site that you do not want Google to fetch, it recommends a robots.txt disallow rule instead. To keep a page out of the index, allow crawling and use the noindex robots rule.