How Many Internal Links in a Blog Post Is Enough or Undue?

In SEO practices, it is common to work on links to optimize content for search engines, one of them is leveraging internal links. Internal links help you connect relevant pages, aiding search engine bots in comprehending your content. Yet, have you wondered how many internal links are in a blog post?

This article will guide you to figure out the benefits of internal linking and the amount of links you can incorporate into your content. So, read the explanation below until the end! 

How Many Internal Links in a Blog Post?

In the SEO community, it is recommended to have approximately three to four internal links with around one more link per 300 words. Yet, this is not a strong guideline since it depends on your content length, user experience, and link usefulness.

Google’s old saying of adding 150 internal links in content at maximum is also not applicable anymore. 

The reasons are Google now gets a lot of data from Chrome users, so they do not just rely on spiders anymore, large index pages are no longer necessary because sitemaps are enough, and Google's processing power is not truly limited anymore; thus, any restrictions on their crawling are essentially artificial.

Since many websites make extensive use of link architectures and cross-citations for which Google has no justification to penalize, Google is not going to impose a technological cap on the number of links on a page. 

Therefore, the best practices for internal linking are to add the links when it is useful to your content only, consider the user experience by not putting links on every single word in the article that can distract the readers, and not link to the same page more than once from the article. 

Types of Internal Links

An internal link is a link connecting one page to another within the same site and root domain. In general, there are some internal links placed on the page and in the blog post. Below are the types of internal links you should know:

1. Call to Action Links

Call-to-action links lead visitors to perform certain actions, such as purchasing, subscribing, ordering, and many more. These contextual links are usually placed at the bottom of the article in the form of imperative phrases, like “Talk to our marketing team”, “set a call with us”, “read article”, and many more. 

2. Navigation Links

Navigation links are located on almost every page of the site, which you can see in the form of page-level navigation links (Home > Blog > What Is SEO Content Outline…). Every link can be clicked and will redirect you to the destination. 

3. Internal Links to Blog Post 

It is the link you specifically include inside your content to entice people to visit other areas of your website—typically other blog posts. Usually, you can find it in the middle of the paragraph sitting on some phrases. If you click it, you will be directed to the page. 

4. On-Page Links

On-page links are usually in the form of a table of contents leading to some headings or subheadings in the article. 

Additionally, there is an occasionally visible "hidden" on-page link located in the lower right corner of the page. The blog comment box located at the bottom is an additional instance of these links. By clicking on the "reply" button, you can access the reply fields through an internal link.

5. Dynamic Internal Links

Dynamic internal links are not fixed links and will change over time. The most common type of this link is the “Related Post” or “Related Product” you can find at the bottom of the pages. Because it constantly changes, Google mostly ignores dynamic internal links. However, you can still leverage this link to improve the indexing and user experience. 

6. Footer Links

These links have the same function as the navigational links. It's common to observe a significant association between the links found in a website's footer and its navigation. 

One example of footer links is the Privacy Policy, Terms, & Conditions. Even though they might not have the same amount of authority as the pages that are referenced in the headline, they nonetheless mostly include information that the typical user would find interesting.  

7. Sidebar Links

These links are less common now that most modern web design is concentrated on providing a mobile-first, responsive experience on a mobile device, but they can still be well-implemented provided user-friendliness is prioritized in both desktop and mobile settings.

From an SEO perspective, these links are more focused on information that could help the same person than they are on directly linking to the page in question.

Benefits of Internal Linking in SEO

Before figuring out how many internal links are in a blog post, you should know the benefits so that you have the urgency to place one based on SEO best practices. Here are the advantages you can get when implementing internal linking best practices. 

1. Assist Google in Finding and Reading Your Content

With millions of blog posts in the search results published every day, it will be hard for Google to discover and understand new content. 

Google crawlers locate and index articles for its results pages. Whether it is your blog content, the main page, or even the services pages, by using internal links to create obvious routes between them, you facilitate search engine crawlers' ability to find fresh information and maintain an updated index.

A website with a strong link structure can also avoid orphaned pages, which become standalone and more difficult to find for visitors and search engines.

2. Boost Website Traffic

Google has a guideline for its algorithm but never discloses how it works. Google has mentioned that incorporating internal links is essential and has become one of the ranking factors you should consider. 

3. Improve User Experience

Internal links give users of your website an easy-to-use and flawless navigation experience. You can keep visitors interested and entice them to explore your website further by directing them to pertinent and related material. 

4. Construct Website Architecture

Internal links improve your website's general organization and structure. Establishing a sensible linking structure may help search engines comprehend the hierarchy and significance of your pages. This ensures that search engines and users alike find all of your important content and helps with effective indexing.

5. Convert Lead to Customer

An effective internal linking strategy can direct visitors to pages that are optimized for conversions. You may raise conversion rates by smoothly guiding readers from educational blog pieces or product evaluations to sign-up or sales pages.

6. Increase Engagement Metrics

Increasing engagement metrics is one of the internal linking benefits you can experience. Properly positioned internal links have a good impact on important engagement metrics, such as time on site and bounce rate. 

Users are more likely to click through and stay on your website longer when they find relevant internal links. By giving them access to useful resources, you raise the likelihood that they will become devoted readers or clients.

Conclusion

Those are the information about how many internal links in a blog you should add. In conclusion, there is no standard quantity of internal links in an article. What you can do is put the link in consideration of user experience. 

Although the internal link is one of the ranking factors, it does not mean that you can massively spree the links on every single word and make the reading journey harder for users. 

But, if you are still confused about how to incorporate internal links into your blog post, you can work with SEO Writing Services by cmlabs in which we are not only placing the links effectively but also producing the posts for you based on SEO best practices. Set up a meeting to discuss your SEO needs in more detail.