Internal linking
Definition
Internal linking is the set of links between the pages of your own website. Well built, it guides your visitors towards action and helps search engines understand your site.People think "links" and imagine external links from other sites. But the links you control 100% are those on your own site: article to article, article to service page, definition to offer. That is internal linking.
It serves two goals. For your visitors: every piece of content offers a logical next step; nobody ends up in a dead end. A reader landing on a blog article should be able to slide naturally towards your offer. For search engines: internal links draw your site's structure, indicate which pages matter and help new pages get discovered and understood.
Good internal linking is cultivated: every new article links to 2 or 3 existing pieces, and existing content is updated to point to the new ones. This glossary itself is part of kernweb.be's linking: technical terms mentioned in our articles link automatically to their definition.
Internal linking is continuous work, not a one-off setting: it is one of the levers we pull with every publication.
You can watch this mechanism live on our blog: every article points to the content and pages that extend its question.
A simple rule for every new page or article: add at least two outgoing links to existing content, and one incoming link from an existing page to the new one.
Frequently asked questions
No, the two complement each other: links from other websites bring reputation, internal linking distributes it across your pages and guides the visitor towards action. Internal linking has one decisive advantage: it depends on you alone.
Three to six chosen links, with descriptive link texts, beat twenty automatic ones. The rule: every link must help the reader continue, not inflate a counter.