Internal links are the cheapest SEO work there is. You already own both pages. Yet most sites I audit either barely link their pages together or link them with words that say nothing. For internal linking for AI search, that is a missed signal on every page. Here is how I think about it, and why a useful suggestion has to name the exact sentence and the anchor.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Internal links pass link equity and tell engines which pages matter most.
- The anchor text tells Google and AI engines what the target page is about.
- “Learn more” and “click here” waste the signal.
- Link children up to the parent, the parent down to its children, and siblings across.
- Do not overdo it. A few strong, relevant links beat a wall of them.
What internal links do for SEO and AI search
“it helps pass the link equity throughout the website”
Beth Guide, How to Hire a Webmaster, Part VI: Silos and Internal Linking (May 2025)
Some people still call it link juice. Either way, internal links spread authority within your own domain, from the pages that earned it, such as the homepage and blog posts that picked up backlinks, to the pages you want ranking. They signal which pages are most important, and they help engines move through the site and understand the hierarchy. The better supported a page is, the better its ranking, and the easier it is for a user or a search engine to find.
On one lighting site we built, the landscape lighting page sits on top, with fountain lighting, path lighting, flood lighting and the rest underneath it. Every one of them links back up, and a related pages block at the bottom ties the set together.
“it’s that interconnectivity of each of the pages that actually makes this thing tick.”
Beth Guide, How to Hire a Webmaster, Part VI: Silos and Internal Linking (May 2025)
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How to Hire a Webmaster, Part VI: Silos and Internal Linking (May 2025). Beth Guide teaches this live, most months, with HCC and SCORE.
Anchor text is the internal linking signal
The words you link tell the engine what the next page is about. On my own site, the words local SEO link to the local SEO page.
“it sends a signal to Google that this page is about local SEO.”
Beth Guide, Google Hacks 2025 (Internet Marketing Clinic, June 2025)
If that same link sat on a page about buying shoes, Google would not know what to do with it. The context and the anchor have to agree. The same logic carries into AI search optimization: the clearer your pages explain how they relate, the easier your main page is to understand and cite.
This is where most sites leak. On a real estate build, I caught myself with four core offerings on the homepage, luxury homes, relocation, office space and investment property, each with a “learn more” link under it. The pages existed. The links said nothing. The fix was to link the words luxury homes to the luxury homes page, and so on. Same pages, same number of links, a far clearer signal.
Keyword anchors do not mean the exact same phrase every time. On backlinks I tell clients to use the keyword in maybe 20 percent of links, not all of them. Internally, vary the wording naturally, but keep it descriptive.
Internal links up, down and across your website
In a silo, every page has three kinds of links:
- Up: each child links to its parent with the parent’s keyword.
- Down: the parent links to each child, so engines find them.
- Across: siblings link to each other where it helps the reader.
Orphans are the enemy. A travel site we had built moved to another company and was rebuilt. The new build dropped the links that held the region pages together, and some URLs changed, which cost the backlinks those pages had earned. The pages still existed. Nothing tied them together anymore.
Internal links are user experience, too. A visitor reading about path lighting wants the next page on landscape lighting, not a dead end. An external link sends people away; an internal link keeps them moving through your content. That is an internal linking strategy in one sentence: always give the user the next useful page.
If you are not sure how your site hangs together, start with website structure for AI search. Linking only works when there is a structure to link.
And do not go overboard with interlinking. Twenty links in one paragraph helps nobody. A handful of relevant, descriptive links in the body, plus a related block at the bottom, is what I aim for.
Why an internal link suggestion needs the exact sentence
Most tools that mention internal links say something like “this page has few internal links.” True, and useless. Which page should link to it? Where on that page? With what words? If you have to answer those yourself, the tool gave you a task, not a fix. That is the gap I describe in SEO action plan.
The elev8tor content scanner gives link suggestions with the source page, the exact sentence on that page and the anchor text to use. You open the page, find the sentence and link the words. It also lists the weak anchors you already have, the “learn more” and “click here” links, so you can rewrite them.
Internal link support also feeds the score. Rankability is the Content score plus internal link support, so a well written page that nothing links to does not rate the same as one inside a supported hub.
At the site level, internal link strength in our SEO tools ranks every page from weakest to strongest, with the pages that should link to it, and the interactive site map shows red wherever pages in a hub do not link up. When you want to win a specific keyword, Win a keyword shows the supporting pages and the links up and down that the pages beating you have.
A 30 minute internal linking pass for your website
- Pick one hub: the parent and its children.
- On every child, link the parent’s keyword up to the parent once in the body.
- On the parent, link each child with its keyword.
- Find every “learn more” and “click here” and replace it with a keyword anchor.
- Add a related pages block that links the siblings.
- Run the parent through the scanner and add the link suggestions it gives you.
That pass works on any site. On client sites we run it hub by hub, which is why the agency SEO platform shows link strength across every site you manage. It pairs with entity coverage too: links carry the topic across pages, and entities make each page complete. To try the suggestions on your own page, start with the free demo, and read why elev8tor works this way.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
There is no fixed number. Aim for a handful of relevant, descriptive links in the body plus a related pages block, linking up to the parent, down to the children and across to siblings. Do not stuff a paragraph with links.
Yes. The anchor tells Google and AI engines what the target page is about. “Learn more” and “click here” carry no topic signal, so replace them with the target page’s keyword.
No. Keep anchors descriptive and on topic, but vary the wording naturally. Beth’s rule for backlinks is the keyword in about 20 percent of links, and a similar idea of variety works inside your own site.
An internal link whose words do not describe the target page, such as “learn more,” “read this” or “click here.” The elev8tor Content Scanner lists your weak anchors so you can rewrite them with the right words.
A tight silo with descriptive anchors shows which page is the main answer on a topic and which pages support it. That makes the main page easier for search engines and AI engines to understand, rank and cite.
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Related posts and pages
- Website structure for AI search: mind maps, silos and schema
- SEO action plan: why most SEO tools give you data instead of answers
- Content Scanner: link suggestions with the exact sentence and anchor
- Agency SEO platform: link strength across every client site
elev8tor.ai is developed by Vertical Web and Beth Guide, drawing on more than 20 years of SEO work.
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