WordPress Internal Linking: A Practical Strategy

A good internal linking strategy for WordPress comes down to three habits: make sure every page you want found has links pointing to it, give each topic one main page that the related posts link to, and use link text that says what the reader will get. Start with an audit to find orphan pages, fix those first, then add links from older posts every time you publish something new.

Internal links matter for two reasons. Google finds pages mainly by following links, and its documentation on links says the link text tells both people and Google something about the page you are linking to. Readers use the same links to find the next useful thing to read. A strategy that helps readers almost always helps search too.

Step 1: Audit the links you already have

You need two lists: how many internal links each page has, and which pages have none at all.

Search Console

Open Links in the Search Console menu and look at Internal links > Top linked pages. Click More to see the full list. If your most important service page sits near the bottom while old blog posts sit near the top, your links are pointing the wrong way.

A crawler

Search Console only shows pages Google already knows about. A crawler shows your site the way a visitor clicking around would. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is free for up to 500 URLs per crawl, which covers most small business sites.

1. Enter your home page address and start the crawl.
2. On the Internal tab, filter to HTML and look at the Unique Inlinks column. Pages with one or two inlinks are only reachable through a menu or an archive page.
3. Export that list to a spreadsheet.

Finding orphan pages

An orphan page has no internal links pointing to it, so a crawler that starts at your home page will never find it. To catch them, compare the crawl with your XML sitemap. If you use Rank Math or Yoast, the sitemap is at /sitemap_index.xml. Copy the URLs from the post and page sitemaps into the same spreadsheet. Any URL in the sitemap that is missing from the crawl is an orphan.

For each orphan, decide: is it worth linking to? If yes, link to it from a related page. If it is out of date or repeats another page, it may be better merged or kept out of search instead.

Step 2: Give each topic a hub

The simplest structure that works for a small business site is hub and spoke. Each service or main topic gets one hub page, usually the service page. Related blog posts are the spokes. Every spoke links to the hub, and the hub links to its best spokes.

Here is how that looks for one topic on this site. The hub is our WordPress maintenance plans page. Posts that answer the questions people ask before they need maintenance are its spokes:

• Fixing broken links on a WordPress site
• Managing plugins to keep WordPress fast
• What a WordPress plugin can access
• Fixing a hacked WordPress site

Each of those posts has a natural spot to mention that a care plan takes the job off your hands, and that is where the link to the hub goes. The spokes can also link to each other where it genuinely helps: the plugin access post leads naturally to the hacked site guide.

Two rules keep this tidy. One hub per topic: if two pages are both trying to be the main page for the same search, they compete, and you should pick one. And spokes link to the hub with text about the hub’s topic, not with the same keyword phrase every time.

Step 3: Write link text that says where the link goes

Link text, also called anchor text, is the clickable words. Google’s guidance asks for text that is descriptive, reasonably short and relevant to the page it points to. In practice:

Put the link where the topic comes up in the text, not in a “related links” pile at the end. A link inside a sentence that explains why it is worth clicking does the most work, for readers and for search.

Step 4: Let WordPress do some of the work

• Linking while you write. In the block editor, select some text, press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac) and start typing the title of another post. WordPress searches your own posts and pages so you do not need to copy URLs.
• Link counts. Rank Math’s Link Counter shows the internal, external and incoming links for each post, which makes posts with no incoming links easy to spot. Yoast shows similar counts.
• Breadcrumbs. Rank Math and Yoast can both add breadcrumbs (Home > Blog > Post), which give every post a link back up to its section.
• Related posts blocks. An automatic related posts list under each article helps readers, but it chooses by category or tag, not by meaning. Treat it as extra, not as a replacement for links in the text.
• Menus. Keep the main menu to your hubs: services, a few key pages, the blog and contact. A menu with every page in it helps no one.

Step 5: Make it a monthly routine

1. Every new post: before you publish, link it to its hub. After you publish, open a few older related posts and add a link to the new one where it fits. This is the step most sites skip, and it is why new posts end up as orphans.
2. Once a month: check Search Console’s Top linked pages and rerun the crawl. Fix any broken internal links you find. Our guide to fixing broken links covers how.
3. When you merge or remove a page: update the links that pointed to it so they go straight to the page you kept, instead of through a redirect or to a dead end.

If you would like this done once properly, with a list of exactly which links to add and where, we can do a link audit for your site.

Frequently asked questions

How many internal links should a page have?

There is no set number. Link wherever a reader would genuinely want to go next. A short post might have two or three links in the text; a long guide will naturally have more. If you are adding links to hit a target, you have too many.

What is an orphan page?

A page that no other page on your site links to. Visitors cannot reach it by clicking around, and Google can only find it through your sitemap or links from other sites. Find them by comparing a crawl of your site with your XML sitemap.

Do links in menus and footers count?

Yes, Google follows them like any other link. But because they appear on every page, they say little about how one page relates to another. Links inside your article text carry that context.

Should internal links be nofollow?

No. Nofollow is for links you do not want to vouch for, such as paid or user-submitted links. There is no reason to use it on links to your own pages.

Is a related posts plugin enough?

No. It helps readers find more to read, but it picks posts automatically. The links that matter most are the ones you add in the text yourself, to the page that best answers the question.