SEO Guide
Internal Linking for Small Business Websites, Explained Simply
When people talk about links and SEO, they usually mean links from other websites pointing at yours. Those matter, but they are slow to earn and mostly out of your control. The links between your own pages are the opposite: entirely in your hands, free, and often neglected. On a small site, getting them right is one of the most useful things you can do in an afternoon.
Internal links do three jobs. They help Google find your pages (a page nothing links to may never be discovered). They tell Google which pages you consider most important and how they relate to each other. And they guide visitors from where they landed to where they can actually hire you.
How Google reads your links
Google follows links to discover pages, and it uses the links between pages to understand a site's structure. A page that many of your other pages link to looks important. A page linked only from a footer, three clicks deep, looks like an afterthought. The words you use in a link (the 'anchor text') tell Google what the destination is about: 'water heater repair' says far more than 'click here.'
Nothing about this is a trick. It is the same signal a well-organized shop gives a customer: the important things are near the door and clearly signposted, and related things are shelved together.
The hub-and-spoke plan
For most small business sites, one simple structure works well. Think of it as a wheel.
- The hub is your main services page. It briefly introduces each service and links to its dedicated page. Your menu links to the hub.
- The spokes are the individual service pages. Each links back to the hub, and to closely related services where it genuinely helps the visitor (water heater repair might link to water heater replacement, for example).
- The articles sit around the outside. Each one links to the one service page it relates to, using words that describe that service. An article about why water heaters leak links to your water heater page; it doesn't link to every service you offer.
The result is that your service pages, the pages that bring in work, receive links from every direction: the menu, the hub, related services and every relevant article. That concentrates their importance exactly where you want it. Our guide to writing a service page covers what those pages should contain.
Writing good link text
The words of a link should describe where it goes. A few guidelines:
- Be descriptive and natural. 'Our [drain cleaning] service' reads well and tells Google what the page is about. 'Click here' and 'learn more' tell it nothing.
- Vary it a little. Linking with exactly the same phrase from fifty places looks mechanical. Use the natural wording each sentence calls for.
- Don't link the same page five times in one article. Once, in the most relevant place, is enough.
- Link where the reader would want to go next. If the paragraph is about cost, link to your price guide. If it's about a problem, link to the service that fixes it.
Common problems we find
When we review small business sites, the same internal linking problems come up again and again:
- Orphan pages: pages that exist but that nothing links to, often a town page or an old service page created years ago. Google may never find them, and visitors certainly won't.
- Everything in the footer: dozens of links crammed into the footer and nowhere else. Footer links help a little, but links in the body of a relevant page carry much more meaning.
- Blog posts that link nowhere: articles that answer a question well but never point the reader to the service that solves their problem. That's a missed customer, not just a missed SEO signal.
- Broken links: links to pages that were renamed or removed, ending in a 'page not found' error. Every redesign creates some; our article on redesigning without losing rankings covers how to avoid them.
- Menus built for the business, not the customer: menus organized around company departments or jargon rather than the services people search for.
How many clicks deep is too deep?
A useful rule of thumb: every important page should be reachable within two or three clicks of your home page. On a small site that is easy: home, then services, then the individual service. If an important page can only be reached by a long chain of clicks, or only through a search box, move it closer.
It's worth checking with fresh eyes. Open your site on a phone, start at the home page and try to reach each service page as a customer would. Anything that takes more than a few taps, or that you can only find because you know it's there, needs a better link.
A twenty-minute internal link audit
- List your service pages, your town pages and your articles.
- For each service page, count how many other pages link to it. Every one should be linked from the menu or hub, plus any related service and article.
- For each article, check it links to at least one service page, with descriptive words.
- Look for pages that no other page links to, and either link to them or decide they aren't needed.
- Click every link in your menu and footer to catch broken ones.
Search Console's 'Links' report, in the left-hand menu, shows which of your pages receive the most internal links, which is a quick way to see whether your priorities match Google's view. Our Search Console guide shows where to start.
Links to other websites
One last note: don't be afraid to link out. A link from your article to a manufacturer's warranty page, a county permit office or a genuinely useful guide helps your reader, and helping your reader is the point. Linking out does not 'leak' your ranking in any way a small business needs to worry about.
If you'd like a second opinion on how your own pages link together, the local SEO bundle is a good place to start, or get in touch.
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