INTERNAL LINKSHub and spoke, plainly
SELLWRIGHTOn a small website, internal linking tends to be an afterthought: a menu, a footer and a few “read more” buttons. Yet Google finds pages mainly by following links from pages it has already crawled, and visitors move through a site the same way. A simple rule, applied every time you publish, does more than any plugin.
Why do internal links matter on a small site?
Because they tell Google and visitors which pages exist and how they relate. Google uses links to find new pages and as a signal when judging how relevant a page is, and its guidance is plain: every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site. Google even says a small site that is comprehensively linked internally might not need a sitemap, which shows how much discovery depends on links.
What does hub and spoke mean in practice?
It means one page per topic that links out to the detail, and detail pages that link back. On a service business site it usually looks like this:
- The services page is the hub. It links to every service page, with a sentence on who each one is for.
- Each service page links back to the hub, to one or two related services and to the articles that explain it in more depth.
- Each article links to the one service it supports and to one related article, inside the text where the link makes sense.
- Each case study links to the service it used, and that service page links back to it.
That structure holds for a site of twenty pages or two hundred. You don't need named topic clusters, only a rule that everyone who publishes follows.
What should the link text say?
The link text should say what the next page is about, in a few words. Google describes good anchor text as descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to the page it sits on, and lists “click here” and “read more” as examples to avoid:
Weak: To see our bookkeeping service, <a href="/services/bookkeeping/">click here</a>.
Better: We also handle <a href="/services/bookkeeping/">monthly bookkeeping for small firms</a>.Vary the wording naturally rather than repeating one keyword. Google says that if keywords feel forced into anchor text, it's probably too much, and that the words around a link matter as well. It also advises against placing several links side by side, because readers find them harder to tell apart.
What is an orphan page, and how do you find one?
An orphan page is one that no other page on your site links to. Visitors can only reach it from search results or a direct link, and nothing on the rest of your site leads Google to it. Typical orphans on small sites:
- Campaign landing pages that were never linked from the main site.
- Older articles that dropped off the first page of the blog.
- A new service page that never made it into the menu or onto the services hub.
To find them, compare every page you publish, from your sitemap or a CMS export, with the pages a crawler reaches by following links from the home page. Anything on the first list but not the second is an orphan. Search Console's Links report helps from the other side: its table of top internally linked pages shows which pages your site links to most, and Google suggests using it to confirm that core pages such as the home and contact pages are properly linked. It is a sample, not a complete list.
Which links can Google follow?
Google can generally crawl a link only when it is an <a> element with an href attribute. Buttons or other elements that navigate with a script event may never be followed. Links that JavaScript adds to the page are fine, as long as the result is that same <a href> markup.
How do you keep it working as the site grows?
Build the rule into the CMS so it doesn't depend on memory. In Webflow, if your services and articles are both Collections, a reference field on each article can point to its service. A collection list on the article template, filtered by the current page's reference, then shows related articles automatically, which Webflow's help describes as a common way to build related content. On each service page, the same field lets you list every article about that service.
Before publishing any page, check two things: one link in from a hub or related page, and one link out to the next step a reader should take.
Where to start
List your service pages and your ten most visited articles, and check each one for a link in from a hub and a link out to a service. Fill the gaps with a sentence and a descriptive link, not a row of related buttons. Our SEO and AI search service covers internal linking with the rest of technical SEO, or start with a website review.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How many internal links should a page have?
There is no target number. Google says there is no ideal number of links for a page, and that if you think it's too much, it probably is. Link where a reader would genuinely want to go next, which on most service pages and articles means a handful of links in the text, not dozens.
Do menu and footer links count?
They are real links, so they help Google and visitors find your main pages. But they repeat on every page and say little about how two pages relate. Google's advice is to think about which other pages would help a reader understand the current one, and to link to them in context, inside the text.
Should old articles link to new ones?
Yes, where it helps the reader. When you publish a new article, find two or three older pages on the same subject and add a sentence that links to it. Google finds most pages through links from pages it has already crawled, so this helps the new page get found and gives it context.
Do breadcrumbs count as internal links?
Yes, as long as each step is a normal link. A breadcrumb trail gives every page a link back up to its section, which suits a hub and spoke structure. Google can also show breadcrumbs in search results, working them out from the words in your URLs or from breadcrumb structured data.
Does our URL structure matter for internal linking?
Less than most people think on a small site. Google says grouping pages into directories mainly affects crawling once a site has more than a few thousand URLs, and that keywords in the URL path alone have hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs. Readable URLs such as /services/bookkeeping/ still help people see where they are.
