Internal Linking for Small Websites: How to Plan It and Where to Start
Internal links are the one part of SEO that costs nothing and is entirely in your hands. You decide which pages get linked, from where and with which words, and you can change it this afternoon. Yet most small business sites treat linking as an accident: a menu somebody built years ago, a few “click here” links in old blog posts and a handful of pages nobody can reach at all.
Most guides to internal linking are written for large sites, with thousands of pages, paid crawlers and talk of pyramids. If your site has 15 or 50 pages, the “three clicks from the homepage” rule is trivially met, and the real question is different: which pages deserve the links, and where should they come from? This guide answers that, in order, with free tools, and relies on Google’s documentation for the rules.
What Google actually says
Google’s guidance on links is short and practical:
- Use proper links. Google generally follows links built as an anchor element with an href. Pseudo-links that depend on JavaScript to navigate are not recommended and may be missed.
- Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. A page with no links pointing to it is hard for Google to find.
- Anchor text should be descriptive and concise. Google suggests a test: read only the anchor text and ask whether it makes sense on its own. “Click here” and “read more” are listed as poor examples.
- There is no ideal number of links per page, though excessive linking is likely to be a problem. Do not stuff keywords into anchors, because that breaches Google’s spam policies.
Google’s SEO starter guide adds that Google primarily finds pages through links from pages it has already crawled. In other words, your internal links are how Google discovers and understands the rest of your site.
Step 1: Decide which pages matter most
Before adding a single link, list your pages and sort them by what they do for the business. Linking everything to everything dilutes the signal. A simple sort:
| Page type | Role | Should receive |
|---|---|---|
| Service or product pages | These make money | The most internal links, from guides and the menu |
| Guides and articles | These attract searches | Links out to the service pages, and to related guides |
| Trust pages (about, case studies, reviews) | These convince | Links from service pages and the contact page |
| Contact or booking page | The end of the journey | A link from nearly every page, via the menu |
| Legal and housekeeping (privacy, terms) | Required, not persuasive | Footer links only |
Put this in a spreadsheet with four columns: the URL, what the page is for, the search it should answer, and how many other pages link to it. The last column is the one you will fill in next.
Step 2: See what you already have, for free
Google Search Console gives you a starting point. The Links report includes a table called “Top linked pages from within your own site”, and selecting a URL shows which of your other pages link to it. Google suggests using it to confirm that core pages, such as the home page and contact page, are properly linked and that users can get from page A to page B in as few clicks as practical.
Know its limits, because Google states them. The report is not a comprehensive list of every link on your site, it shows a sample, tables are limited to 1,000 rows, and it does not say whether a link is marked nofollow. Treat it as a guide, not a census. For a small site, it is often enough to see which pages get plenty of links and which get few or none.
You can also check by hand. Open each important page and look at the menu, the body text and the footer. Ask: if a visitor landed on the homepage, could they reach this page in two clicks, using a link that makes sense?
Step 3: Find the orphans
An orphan page has no internal links pointing to it. It may still be in your sitemap, and it may even be indexed because of an external link, but Google has no route to it from your own site and neither does a visitor.
To find suspects, take the list of URLs from your sitemap or your content system and check each in the Links report. Pages that do not appear among the linked pages are candidates. Because the report is a sample, confirm by searching your site for a mention of the page, or by opening the pages you would expect to link to it. Then fix each orphan by adding a genuine link from the most relevant page, not by dumping it in the footer.
How RankMaster works with small business websites
RankMaster is a Brazilian SEO and GEO agency, with its site at rankmaster.com.br, that works remotely and in British English with UK businesses. Internal linking is part of how we plan a site: we map which pages should lead to which, then check the links on every audit. The work is delivered in three recurring parts:
- Monthly plan. A written plan before each month: which pages to build or improve, how they should link together, and the technical fixes that come first, each with the reason.
- Monthly report. What was published, what Google Search Console shows for each page, and how the business appears in AI answers, including what did not change.
- Daily monitoring. Ongoing checks for pages leaving the index, broken links, failing forms and robots.txt changes that could hide the site.
We do not promise rankings or citations, because no one can guarantee them. If you want to see how linking fits into a larger content plan, read our article on programmatic SEO and scaling content without losing quality, learn more about RankMaster or ask for a free analysis through the contact page.
Step 4: Write links that read well
Contextual links, the ones inside your paragraphs, are the easiest to improve. Our judgement, drawing on Google’s anchor text advice, is to link where the link helps the reader, and to use the words that describe the destination.
| Weak | Better | Why |
|---|---|---|
| For more, click here | Our guide to ranking higher on Google covers the basics | The anchor describes the page |
| Read more | See what a bookkeeping service includes | Specific, short and natural |
| best SEO agency London cheap | A page about your actual pricing | No keyword stuffing |
| Visit our website | Contact us about a free quote | Tells the reader what happens next |
Some habits that help:
- Link early where it matters, when a reader meets a term or a service, not only in the last paragraph.
- Vary the wording, but keep it accurate. The same page can be linked as “our pricing”, “how we charge” or “a quote”.
- Link both ways in a pair. A guide that mentions a service should link to it, and the service page should link back to the guide that explains it.
- Check the destination. A link to a redirected or missing page wastes the visit.
Step 5: Menus, footers and breadcrumbs
Your main menu is the strongest internal link signal you control, because it appears on every page. Keep it to the pages that matter most: main services, about, contact. A menu with 25 items buries them. Put a longer list in a services overview page instead.
The footer suits utility links such as privacy, terms and sitemap. Do not rely on it to carry your important pages. Breadcrumbs, the “Home > Services > Boiler repair” trail above a page, help visitors see where they are on a larger site and add useful links. They matter less on a site of a dozen pages.
Check that menu items are real links. A menu built so that it only works through scripts may be invisible to crawlers, which is the problem Google’s link guidance warns about.
Hubs and spokes for guides
If you write more than a few articles on related topics, organise them. Choose a main guide for each topic, make it the best page you have on the subject, and link it to the detailed articles that sit under it. Link those articles back to the main guide and sideways to each other when relevant. For a UK accountancy practice, the hub might be “self assessment help”, with spokes on deadlines, allowable expenses and what to do if you have missed a deadline.
This also lets you spot overlap. If two articles try to answer the same question, link them with a clear signal of which is which, or merge them, rather than letting them compete.
A ninety-minute starter plan
| Minutes | Task |
|---|---|
| 15 | List your pages and tag each with its role and target search |
| 15 | Check the Links report and fill the “links in” column |
| 15 | Find orphans and decide where each should be linked from |
| 30 | Add 10 to 15 genuine links from your best pages to the pages that make money |
| 15 | Fix weak anchors and any links to redirected or missing pages |
Revisit it every quarter, and every time you publish a new page: add the links to it from older pages on the same day.
Common mistakes
- Linking every page to every other page, so no link means anything.
- Generic anchor text such as “click here”.
- Important pages linked only from the footer or a sitemap page.
- Menus built with scripts that do not use real links.
- Links to redirected, missing or test pages.
- Keyword-stuffed anchors.
- Publishing new pages without linking them from existing ones.
Frequently asked questions
How many internal links should a page have?
Google says there is no ideal number, though excessive linking is likely to be a problem. Link where it helps the reader.
Should I use nofollow on internal links?
Google’s guidance reserves nofollow for links you do not trust, paid links and user-generated links. Links to your own pages do not normally need it.
Do internal links help rankings?
They help Google find and understand your pages, and they show visitors what to read next. Google does not promise a ranking effect from any single change, and results depend on many other things.
Is a sitemap a substitute for internal links?
No. A sitemap can help Google discover pages, but Google says a well-linked site can usually be discovered without one, and it recommends that every page you care about is linked from another page.
How long until changes show?
It depends on how often Google crawls your site. Google’s starter guide suggests waiting a few weeks before judging an effect, and any exact timeline given without seeing your site is a guess.
Your first thirty minutes
Open your homepage and your most profitable service page. Count the links that lead to that service page from elsewhere on the site. If the answer is one, or none, you have found your first job. Add three genuine links from your best guides, using words that describe the service, and then check the result in the Links report in a few weeks. If you would like a second opinion on the structure of your site, ask for a free analysis through the RankMaster contact page.