SEO Intralinking Strategy

This article is almost a decade old, but it’s still relevant in 2025.

Let’s say your well-intentioned SEO maven hooked you up with well-optimized SEO landing pages, but they’re relatively orphaned. (Nobody’s linking to them much, not even you, from your own site.) Should you link to them from your site’s other pages, like from your blog? Yes. Intralink.

Intralinking Case Study

Hypothetical site: ACME Widget Co.

Keyword: blue widget

SEO Landing page: …/blue-widget/

Obviously, because you have expertise about the product and how people discuss it, you mention blue widget-ish terminology on other pages too. (If you don’t, get on that. You’ll rarely rank for a keyword if you only use it on one page and/or only use one phrasing; Google can quickly suss that you’re trying to game the system by only optimizing a single page for a very tight keyword.)

Are you selling widgets? Presumably, you have one or more “blue widget” product pages, too, whether or not you’ve opted to make them text-rich pages. (Content is king. With SEO blinders on, our product pages should be troves of information, but unfortunately, some brand web identities don’t allow for oodles of SEO-friendly text on product pages.)

So you create content, maybe in a blog.

Demonstrate expertise in your field, publicly, often. (If you’ve already done this, you can edit and intralink existing content too!)

You mention blue widgets in an article. …Hell, you write a blog post about blue widgets. You’ve used several variations of your core “blue widget” keyword in that blog. How can you best use those keyword iterations as link anchor text targeting other content on your site?

Head to google.com to sleuth

Type this in the Google search field:

site:[yoursite.com] [the keyword you’re working on]

…Swapping for your domain and your keyword for the [bits in brackets].

Hit Enter on your keyboard.

Or click “Google Search”

e.g. site:dandreifort.com SEO
gets you a list Google’s favorite SEO themed pages on this site, in order. (Top is Google’s favorite.)

If your blue widget SEO landing page is new, it probably won’t be toward the top of that list yet. You should then definitely link to that blue widget landing page to get it some traction. But what if your landing page is #4 on the list, and a few of your product pages take the top three spots?

Make link targets natural

Often, link to a good blue widget product page. Sometimes link to the blue widget landing page. We want to tell Google that considerable chunks of our site are good pages for them to consider for blue widget Google search results. You should usually link to whatever you or other stakeholders consider the primary blue widget page. …The one we want to rank highest.

Use descriptive anchor text

We’re long past the days when [click here!] was acceptable anchor text, but [some variation on your keyword] isn’t much better. In this sentence: “The prevalence of tan widgets is understandable because they’re inexpensive, but rarer blue widgets are more valuable because they’re easier to see in the mud.” You might be tempted to make [blue widgets] your link. That’s lazy. Use more! [blue widgets are more valuable] or even consider adding this part too [because they’re easier to see in the mud]

It should be immediately obvious to humans, AI, and Googlebot what’s on the other end of any link, The more context we quickly provide, the better.

So, I should link to several of my pages from my blog post?

Blogs usually shouldn’t be salesy or pitchy. Blogs are typically for engaging or educating, informing, not selling. Maybe link to a couple of your assets. Sometimes just to one. Sometimes not at all? There isn’t a single rule for all sites and brands.

With rare exceptions, do not link to a single resource multiple times from a single page. Nor should you cram your article full of links to every imaginable related product and page.

Why?

It’s ham-fisted. If your content is overstuffed with links, people can quickly see that over-stuffing; they’ll likely feel like they’re being “advertised at” so to speak. It looks tacky. …Google’s even more keen at that assessment; Google knows when you’re stuffing all of your content with links. Keep it natural.

Anchor Text Variation

Mix it up. Don’t always use “blue widget” verbatim to anchor the link to your other “blue widget” content. “Our affordable blue-tinted widgets…” is fine anchor text. Do you use a synonym for “widget”? (whatever your ‘widget’ is!) Using that synonym as part of anchor text is a great idea! Not everybody searches the same way, and the more you describe your products in different ways your audience might be searching, the better.

Linking to third party URLs?

Yes. If your brand manual allows it, link to relevant non-competitor third-party content sometimes, or even often. Just don’t link to your direct competitors. No need to help them!

In short:

1. Be aware of your keywords when you’re blogging.
2. site:yoursite your keyword – is the syntax to find out what pages Google likes already. Don’t fight Google, just nudge them.
3. Don’t always link to the same page; pick a few to regularly reinforce. But leaning mostly on one is often smart, if it’s your fave content to support.
4. Mix up the anchor text, which should usually be more substantial than just a keyword phrase. And don’t overstuff pages with links.
5. Linking to other sites is fine. But don’t link to competitors.

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Dan Dreifort consults on SEO and UX. He also likes making noise with other musicians.