When a search engine like Google crawls your website, it’s a pretty straightforward process – it discovers a page and follows every link it finds in order to discover more pages.
Something like this:
In this basic example, the crawler starts at the main homepage and discovers internal links to the blog page, the services page, the contact page, and the about page.
From those pages, it discovers links to individual articles, services pages, etc.
Whether your website has a dozen pages, thousands of pages, or millions of pages – the crawling process always works like this at its core.
This is how Google understands your website, and the relationship between pages.
For SEO purposes, it’s important to make this process as efficient as possible.
Let’s look at the most common internal linking inefficiencies I encounter, and how to fix them.
Unnecessary Crawl Depth
Crawl depth refers to how many internal links a crawler has to go through before it discovers a page.
You want each page on your website to be discoverable in as few clicks as possible.
If the page is “buried” too deep and the path to discovery is too long, search engines often decide the page is not important.
Reducing the crawl depth to a page can be an SEO quick win to quickly improve rankings.
I wrote more about this here: The Importance of Internal Links for Page Discoverability.
Let’s take a look at an example: the New York Times.
They created a sitemap that starts with the years, going all the way back to the year 1851 in which it was founded.
Each year you click on is then divided by month and date, and the date pages display a simple list of each article published on that particular date.
This ensures every single page is discoverable within 5 clicks of the main homepage, meaning no page has a crawl depth greater than 5.
Impressive!
Multiple Versions of the Same URL
I recently came across a situation on a client’s website where Google was discovering several versions of each of their URLs.
- https://example.com/service-page-1/ – lower case, with trailing slash
- https://example.com/Service-Page-1/ – upper case words
- https://example.com/service-page-1 – no trailing slash
- https://example.com/service%20page%20-1 – using spaces instead of hyphens
A user visiting your site is not going to experience issues, as these URL variations redirect them to a working page.
For crawlers like Google, on the other hand, this sends mixed signals and they will treat each URL variation as a separate entity.
This can cause confusion as to which version to index and rank, and it could even lead to duplicate content issues and ranking drops.
Not good.
So how does Google encounter these URL variations in the first place?
This happens because it discovers internal links pointing to each of the different URL variations – maybe the link was formatted differently in the past.
I highly recommend every website owner to audit their internal linking profile (or have a detail-obsessed nerd like me do it) and ensure the URL variations used are consistent across the board.
The format I generally use for URLs is lower case, hyphens to separate words, and consistency with the trailing slash.
You should ensure each of your URLs follows a consistent format, and that each internal link points to the same consistent format.
Linking Into a Redirect Chain
A redirect chain occurs when multiple URL redirections happen sequentially, leading from one URL to another and potentially through several intermediary URLs before reaching the final destination.
For example, URL A redirects to URL B, which then redirects to URL C.
This process can slow down website loading times and affect SEO performance – particularly if it happens at a large scale.
Let’s say you have an article about the best running shoes for marathons.
Over the years, the URL has changed a few times for various reasons, for example during a content update.
This causes a redirect chain where the first (original) URL redirects to the second version you used, which then redirects to the third and current version.
A common mistake I see is not updating the internal links across the website to point directly to the new URL – meaning every time Google encounters this internal link, it first has to go through the redirect chain in order to reach its final destination.
This isn’t a huge issue, but if it happens at scale on a large website, you could be in trouble.
Broken Internal Links
Broken internal links are links on a website that lead to non-existent pages within the same website.
They occur when the destination page is deleted, moved without a proper redirect, or the link is incorrectly formatted.
Broken internal links harm user experience and negatively impact SEO by disrupting site navigation and reducing crawl efficiency.
Using crawler tools like Screaming Frog, you can easily identify broken internal links and fix them.
Not Optimizing Internal Linking to Your Money Pages
Chances are that your website has so called “Money Pages” – those pages that generate the most leads and sales for your business.
For a B2B business, these are typically your services pages.
For an e-commerce business, these are typically your product pages and product category pages.
You want your internal linking to be optimized so there are contextually relevant internal links pointing to your money page – this can increase the ranking of your money page.
Unfortunately, internal linking to money pages is very underutilized on many websites I encounter.
Let’s take a look at how an HVAC service provider might go about this.
In this example, there are blog articles published on the website that are related to a service page for air conditioning repair services (the money page).
Each supporting article contains an internal link to the money page, and they also link to each other.
This example is a simplified version of a concept called a virtual silo or a reverse content silo – credit to Kyle Roof for coming up with this technique and explaining it in-depth in his article here.
This is just one method of internal linking you could explore – the best way to go about this depends on your website and your goals.
Not Using the Right Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable, visible text in a hyperlink that directs users to another web page or resource.
It provides context to users and search engines about the linked content.
Effective anchor text is concise, relevant, and descriptive, improving usability and SEO by signaling the content’s relevance to the target page.
In other words: anchor text is your opportunity to tell Google what each page on your website is about!
I often see anchor text being underutilized – and if you’re not careful, misusing it can even harm your SEO.
Using the example above, you’d want your internal links pointing to the Air Conditioner Repair Services Page to say something like “ac repair services”, “repair your ac”, and similar keyword variations.
Get an Internal Linking Audit Today
If your internal linking isn’t optimized, you may be leaving valuable rankings – and sales – on the table.
It’s one of those things that easily gets neglected.
It’s often a missed opportunity and it can even turn into a huge issue over time.
Contact me if you need help auditing your internal linking and identifying opportunities to improve. I can also help you implement changes.
