How Many Internal Links Per Page For SEO? (Answered)

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This guide answers the question, “how many internal links per page for SEO?”

Below, you’ll learn how many internal links per page is ideal for maximum SEO gains. By the end of this page, you’ll know the best number of internal links per page to ensure your internal linking strategy is as effective as possible.

There’s also a section with additional resources on internal linking and how to use it to help you boost your website’s visibility in the search engine result pages (SERPs) to gain more organic traffic.

How Many Internal Links Per Page for SEO?

How Many Internal Links Per Page for SEO?

Each page should have 3-5 internal links per page at a bare minimum, with the most important pages having upwards of 50 or more internal links for SEO.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that there is no universal answer for how many internal links per page is ideal for SEO, as it primarily depends on the length of the content and the importance of the target web page.

A best practice is to use one internal link for roughly every 200-400 words of content, meaning an average 2,000-word blog post would have around 5-10 internal links. As for sending internal links to a target page with keyword-optimized anchor text, you should aim for at least 3-5 internal links for newly published articles (as previously mentioned) and try to increase the number of internal links for your most important content.

Using these figures as a guide will help you pick and choose your internal links carefully while still ensuring you’re using enough hyperlinks to enjoy the benefits of internal links.

However, deciding whether or not to include these links has less to do with hitting some magical sweet spot guaranteed to catapult your web pages to the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) and more to do with calculating the value to be gained from adding each individual hyperlink, which we’ll cover next.

Factors That Influence The Number of Internal Links Per Page

1. Link Relevancy

More than anything else, link relevancy is the main factor determining whether an internal hyperlink should be included.

For example, if you run a blog about outdoor activities and write a blog about fishing rods, including one internal link to a fishing rod review will have more value than three internal links to reviews on tents, as that link is most relevant to the subject.

Remember, there are two main reasons to link between the pages of your website.

  • The first is to help Google understand your site’s structure.
  • The second is to provide optimum user experiences.

Only linking to the most relevant content helps to achieve both objectives.

To use our fishing rod example, that one internal link to the review helps Google and other search engines to understand that the two pages are closely related, adding strength to your SEO content silo structure and helping establish your site as an authoritative source for fishing rod information, something which can help improve your search rankings.

Likewise, if a user comes looking to learn about fishing rods, linking to a tent review may help boost your affiliate sales or ad revenue but does little to help your user who wants to know what fishing rod to buy.

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2. Size and Scope of Your Website

Earlier, we recommended that 5-10 internal links per 2,000 words is an excellent guide to determine how many internal links per page, but what if your site is brand new and only has 5-10 posts to begin with?

Should you be linking to every page on your site?

Not necessarily.

Again, it all comes down to helping search engines understand your structure.

If every page on your website links to every other page, there is no real structure, just an interconnected web that tells Google nothing about the relationship between the pages or which ones are most important, which we’ll cover in the next point.

3. Page Importance

Though helping your visitors achieve their goals is paramount, as a blogger or business owner, you also have your own goals that you want to achieve.

It’s worthwhile keeping this in mind when selecting the number of links to include on each page, focusing on those most essential to your overall objectives.

Say you create a content silo about fishing rods for your outdoor blog. That silo’s pillar page is the one that’s most important to you. It’s the one you’ve invested the most time and energy into to achieve a top three keyword ranking. It’s also the one page that best demonstrates your authority and expertise on the subject and the content you hope will drive the most targeted traffic to your site.

Therefore, you’d want to have as many relevant incoming links to that pillar page from your supporting pages as possible to tell search engines just how important it is. This means if you were deciding how many internal links to include in a new blog post, you might limit it to just the handful of pages that are most crucial to your success.

4. Link Value

Link Value and page importance go hand in hand. The more links you have on a page, the more the value of each link depreciates. This is why it pays to carefully consider the number of internal links you use in your content.

For example, if you only included links to the two or three most important and relevant pages on your site, the link equity (or “link juice”) passed to each of those links would be distributed relatively evenly.

If you added six or seven extra links, that link juice would be diluted. It becomes harder for search crawlers to understand which is your most important content, and the impact of that link to your top pillar pages becomes weaker.

How Many Internal Links Is Too Many?

More than 100 internal links is too many for one page because Google may not crawl all of the links and having an excessive number of internal links will split the PageRank link equity over too many links.

This figure originated with a blog post from now-former Head of Webspam at Google, Matt Cutts, in which he outlines why the search giant recommends most sites restrict the total number of links to under 100.

Though Cutts’ comments were posted way back in 2009, fewer than 100 links have remained the consensus among SEO professionals ever since, which is why popular search engine optimization tools like Moz and Semrush will flag a warning if you have too many links.

Still, it’s worth remembering that adding external links to your content also benefits your SEO efforts, so you’ll need to factor those into your overall link total.

How Many Internal Links Should Point to Each Page?

As a general rule, it’s a good idea to have at least 3-5 internal links to each page. However, your pillar pages, landing pages, or any other content that is most important to achieving your business goals will benefit from having more relevant internal links pointing toward them.

The number of internal links pointing to each page largely depends on the importance of that content. Plus, web pages that are targeting highly competitive keywords will typically require more internal links than content optimized for low-competition keywords to help the page compete in the SERPs.

Learn More About Internal Links

The links below explain more about internal links and how to optimize them correctly for SEO. Use these resources to improve your knowledge of the subject.

Summary of How Many Internal Links Per Page for SEO

As you discovered, determining how many internal links per page depends on the length of the content, while other factors, such as relevance and visitor value, are equally as important.

To put that another way, the best number of internal links per page varies from page to page, though by following the suggestions in this guide, you’ll be using the ideal number to achieve your SEO goals.