Google finds your pages by following links. That is not a detail, it is the whole mechanism. A page nothing links to barely exists as far as the search engine is concerned, even if it sits in your menu and your sitemap. And a page that links nowhere itself is a dead end: the visitor is finished and goes back to the search results.
This article covers the links inside your own site and the text you make them clickable with. They are the two checks a report lists as “Internal linking” and “Descriptive link text”.
What internal links do
They do three things at once, and all three count.
They point the way. Somebody reads your page about roof repair and wonders what it costs. If there is a link to your pricing page halfway down, they click it. If there is not, they go back to Google and end up with the competitor who did answer the question.
They show Google your site. The crawler follows the links on a page to find the next one. Pages reachable only through a search box or a dropdown get found badly, or not at all.
They spread weight. A page that has collected external links, your homepage for instance, passes part of that value on to everything it links to. That is how the strength of your site reaches the pages you actually earn money with, instead of stopping at your front door.
How many links are enough?
There is no number Google works with, but there is a practical floor. A content page with zero internal links is almost always a mistake: there is always a service, a case or a contact page that belongs with it. One or two is thin. From about three relevant links onwards it becomes a page that sits inside a site rather than an island.
More is not automatically better. Fifty links in a running text make each individual link worth less and the text unreadable. Link where it helps the reader, not to hit a quota.
Watch where the links point as well. Ten links that all go to your homepage count as one destination. Our report therefore states not only how many links there are, but how many distinct addresses they reach.
Anchor text: the trouble with “click here”
The anchor text is the piece of text that is blue and clickable. For the reader it is the promise of what sits behind the link, and for Google it is one of the clearest indications of what the destination is about. Google writes in its own starter guide that with appropriate anchor text, users and search engines can easily understand what your linked pages contain.
“Click here”, “read more” and “here” do not do that. They say literally nothing about the destination. Someone scanning the page sees “read more” four times and still does not know which one they need. And anyone using a screen reader often gets the links read out as a list, at which point “read more, read more, read more” is useless.
The alternative costs no extra work. Instead of “For our rates, click here” you write “See our rates for roof repair”. Same sentence, same length, and now everyone knows where they land.
Links with no text at all
A category of its own is links carrying no text. These are almost always images or icons: a logo linking to the homepage, a shopping cart, the social icons in your footer. To the eye it works fine. To a blind visitor and to Google there is nothing there.
The fix depends on what it is. If it is an image inside a link, give that image alt text describing the destination: alt="Creosoft homepage". If it is an icon from a font set or an SVG, use aria-label on the link itself.
Our report counts empty links more harshly than vague ones, and that is deliberate. “Read more” is sloppy; a link with no text at all is simply unusable for part of your audience.
The same text, different destinations
A subtler fault: two links on the same page with exactly the same wording, going to different addresses. Three times “Request a quote”, where the first goes to the form, the second to the rates and the third to a PDF. The reader has to guess, and half of them guess wrong.
Make the text as specific as the destination. “Request a quote for roof repair” and “Request a quote for roof insulation” are two clear links; two identical “Request a quote” links are one link doing two jobs.
What about links out?
Links to other sites are neither a risk nor a loss. Pointing at a source, a standard or a supplier makes your text more credible, and Google treats it as normal behaviour for a real site. Add rel="noopener" when they open in a new tab, and use rel="nofollow" only where the link is genuinely paid or uncontrolled.
What you can do today
- Open your three most important pages and count, per page, how many links go to other pages of your own.
- Search your texts for “click here”, “read more” and “here”, and rewrite those links to name the destination.
- Check that your logo, your icons and your social icons carry alt text or an aria-label.
- Look for the same link text pointing at two different addresses on one page and make it more specific.
- From your best visited page, add a link to the page you actually earn money with.
Want all of this checked in one go? The free SEO check runs through these points and shows you what was found on your page for each of them.
