Definition
What this term means
The practice of creating hyperlinks between pages within the same website to establish content relationships, hierarchy, and navigation pathways. Internal linking tells both users and AI systems how your content is organised, which pages are most important, how topics relate to each other, and where to find supporting information on related subjects.
Why it matters
The business impact
Internal linking is one of the most direct signals you can give AI systems about your content structure and topical relationships. Strategic internal links within content clusters help AI crawlers discover all of your relevant content and understand how topics connect. Pages with strong internal link support accumulate more authority and are cited more frequently by AI systems than orphaned pages with no contextual connections.
Used in context
How you might use this term
“An audit revealed that a company's highest-value service pages had minimal internal links, effectively making them orphan pages barely connected to the rest of the site. After implementing a strategic internal linking programme connecting them to blog posts, case studies, and related services, AI crawling frequency and citation rates for these pages improved significantly.”