Glossary
Internal links
Internal links are links from one page of your website to another page of the same site, such as a service page linking to the towns you cover. The words you click are the link's anchor text.
Also called internal linking.
What Google uses them for
Google follows links to find pages, and treats them as a signal of which pages are relevant (Google Search Central). Links from other sites are out of your hands. The links between your own pages are yours to add, remove and reword whenever you like.
Google can reliably follow a link when it is an ordinary link with a web address behind it (Google Search Central). A button that moves people along with a script may work for visitors and still leave Google without a path. If a menu item shows no address at the bottom of the browser when you hover over it on a computer, ask whoever built your site whether it is a real link.
The words you link
Anchor text tells people and Google what they will find on the other side. Google asks for anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably short and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it points to, and warns against generic words like "click here" and against cramming in keywords (Google Search Central).
Good anchor text reads like a label, such as "emergency boiler repair" or "the towns we cover". Google also wants links placed in context (Google Search Central), so the sentence around a link matters as well. It tells the reader why they might want the next page before they click.
Where links belong on a local site
Follow the paths your customers take. Each service page should link to the towns you serve, and each town page back to the services you offer there. Your homepage should link to your main services, so nobody has to hunt for them.
Then add links inside the text where they help. A page about repairing a boiler can point to the page about replacing one, at the point where repair stops making sense. A page about a town can point to the job you do most often there.
Images as links
When an image is the link, such as a photo of a finished job that leads to the service page, Google uses the image's alt text as the anchor text (Google Search Central). A linked image with empty alt text is a link without words. Describe where it goes, in the same plain terms you would use for a text link.
How the scan checks them
T5 flags links on the pages the scan read that lead to error pages, and names the page each broken link sits on. T8 works from the other end: it samples pages in your sitemap that none of the pages it read link to.
Neither check judges your anchor text. That part is yours: read your main pages and look only at the words you have linked. If a link makes no sense on its own, rewrite it.
What the free scan checks
Questions
How many internal links should a page have?
There is no right number. Google's advice is to link related pages in context (Google Search Central), so a page needs the links its reader would want next and no more. If a paragraph starts to read like a list of links, trim it.
Should every internal link use my main keyword?
No. Google asks you not to cram keywords into anchor text and reminds site owners that keyword stuffing is a violation of its spam policies (Google Search Central). Let each link describe its own page in words that fit the sentence.
Do links in my menu and footer count?
Yes. They are links like any other, and they put your main pages one click from everywhere on the site. What they cannot do is explain. Use them for the pages everyone needs, and put links that need a reason in the body of the page.
Where this fits in our work
We handle this as part of Content: Service pages, local pages and articles that answer what your buyers ask, with every statistic linked to its source.
Related reading
Posts that use this term
- Can I see what ChatGPT or Google's AI says about my business? No assistant shows you the words it used about your business, so you ask. A list of questions to put to each one, and what to record each round.
Related terms
- Title tag: The page title Google often shows as the link in results, and how to write one for each page.
- Meta description: The short summary in a page's code that Google sometimes shows under a result, and how to write one for every page.
- Search intent: What a searcher wants from a query, how Google reads it, and why a page has to answer that want rather than repeat the words.
- Alt text: The words that describe an image for people who cannot see it and for search engines, and how to write them for each kind of image.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Link best practices for Google, updated December 10, 2025. Checked September 26, 2026.