Internal Linking is Super Critical For SEO

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about internal linking and affirmed that internal linking that goes beyond site breadcrumb navigation is one of the “biggest things” a publisher can do to tell Google what content is the most important.

Breadcrumb Navigation

In children’s stories a protagonist may venture into a forest and leave behind a trail of breadcrumbs they can follow in order to avoid getting lost. A website similarly provides a “breadcrumb” trail in the form of a breadcrumb site navigation so that a site visitor can navigate back through the website structure of a website. Typically a breadcrumb starts at the home page then goes to a category page and then goes to an article.

Home > Category > Article (You Are Here)

Breadcrumb Structured Data

Breadcrumb structured data is a reflection of the breadcrumb navigation which is a part of what’s called internal navigation. Internal navigation makes it easy for site visitors to navigate through a website, going back and forth between the categories and sub-categories of a website to find interesting things to read. Breadcrumb structured data tells Google what the topic of a website category is about.

This category is about x. This category is about y. This category is about z.

Is Breadcrumb Structured Data Enough for Internal Linking?

The person asking the question wanted to know if setting up breadcrumb structured data navigation is enough for internal linking for SEO. This is the question: “If you have structured data for breadcrumbs set up is internal linking still important for SEO?”

Internal Linking is Important

Google’s John Mueller responded by stating that internal linking is an opportunity to communicate to Google something more than what internal navigational links can communicate. John Mueller answered if internal linking was important:

“Yes, absolutely. It’s something where internal linking is super critical for SEO. I think it’s one of the biggest things that you can do on a website to kind of guide Google and guide visitors to the pages that you think are important. And what you think is important is totally up to you. You can decide to make things important where you earn the most money or you can make things important where you’re the strongest competitor or maybe you’re the weakest competitor. With internal linking you can really kind of focus things on those directions and those parts of your site. And that’s not something that you can just replace with structured data. So just because there is a structured data in a page somewhere, I wouldn’t see that as a replacement for normal internal linking. Even if in the structured data you also provide URLs, we don’t use those URLs in the same way as we would use normal internal links on a page. So it’s definitely not the case that hreflang annotations replace links between country versions or breadcrumb annotations replace links between different levels of a website. You should really have normal HTML links between the different parts of your website. And ideally, you should not just have a basic set of links, but rather you should look at it in a strategic way and think about what do you care about the most and how can you highlight that with your internal linking.”

Why Internal Linking is Important

John Mueller didn’t say internal linking was a ranking factor. He just said that it’s a good way to tell Google which pages in a site are important. If we backtrack a little and look at how a website is

crawled and indexed by search engines, we can understand why internal linking is so important for SEO.

When a search engine crawls a website, it follows the links on a page to discover new content and URLs. This process is known as crawling, and it is how search engines discover and index new pages. The more internal links a page has, the more likely it is to be discovered and indexed by a search engine. Additionally, internal links provide search engines with information about the structure and hierarchy of a website, which can help them understand the relevance and importance of different pages.

Internal links also play a crucial role in passing link equity or "link juice" throughout a website. Link equity is the value passed between pages through links, and it can help to boost the search engine rankings of pages that are linked to. By strategically linking to important pages within a website, it is possible to pass link equity to those pages and help them to rank higher in search engine results.

Furthermore, internal links also play a significant role in the user experience of a website. They make it easier for users to navigate through a site and find the information they are looking for. It also helps keep users on a website for longer periods, which can be beneficial for both the user experience and search engine rankings.

In conclusion, internal linking is a critical aspect of SEO that can help to improve the visibility and search engine rankings of a website. It is important to not only set up breadcrumb structured data navigation but to also have a strategic approach when it comes to internal linking. By linking to important pages within a website and passing link equity, it is possible to boost search engine rankings and improve the user experience. Therefore, it is important for website owners to take internal linking seriously and to invest the time and effort required to implement a robust internal linking strategy.