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SEOL

    Internal and external links

    Links are how people and crawlers move through your site. Make every important page reachable with a real, descriptive link, and link out when it helps the reader.

    Time
    18 min
    Level
    beginner
    Reviewed
    5 November 2026

    After this lesson you can

    • Write crawlable links with descriptive anchor text.
    • Plan internal links so important pages are easy to reach.
    • Decide when to link out, and when to use nofollow, sponsored or ugc.

    Links do three jobs: they let people move to related content, they let crawlers discover pages, and they tell search engines how pages relate to each other.

    <!-- Crawlable -->
<a href="/paslaugos/nesiojamu-kompiuteriu-remontas/">nešiojamų kompiuterių remontas</a>

<!-- May not be crawled -->
<span onclick="location.href='/paslaugos/remontas/'">Remontas</span>
<a href="javascript:goTo('remontas')">Remontas</a>

    Anchor text

    Google asks for anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both pages:

    • Avoid generic text such as "click here" and "read more".
    • Avoid stuffing keywords into anchors.
    • For image links, the image's alt text acts as the anchor text.

    A practical structure:

    • Navigation links to main categories or services.
    • Hub pages (categories, service overviews) link to their subpages.
    • Contextual links inside text connect related pages, for example from an article about a laptop that will not turn on to the repair service.
    • Breadcrumbs show where a page sits in the hierarchy.

    Pages with no internal links (orphan pages) may never be found by crawlers, even if they are in the sitemap. Pages buried many clicks deep are found less often.

    Google's starter guide encourages linking to relevant resources when it helps readers, and its link guidance notes that citing sources can build trust. Use rel values to describe the relationship:

    Situationrel
    A useful, trusted sourcenone needed
    A source you do not want to vouch fornofollow
    A paid or sponsored linksponsored (or nofollow)
    Links added by users in comments or forumsugc (or nofollow)

    Links to pages that return 404 frustrate readers and waste crawling. Check internal links with a crawler regularly, especially after deleting pages or changing URLs.

    Practice

    Read the lesson, pass the quiz and do the exercise to complete it.

    Knowledge check

    5 questions. Get at least 4 right to pass.

    1. 1. Which link can Google reliably crawl?
    2. 2. Which anchor text is best for a link to your laptop repair page?
    3. 3. How many internal links should a page have?
    4. 4. Should every external link be nofollow?
    5. 5. An image links to a category. What does Google use as the anchor text?

    Exercise: Strengthen internal links to your priority pages

    For your five priority pages, find how many internal links point to each (a crawler's Inlinks report, or a site search). Then find three relevant places on your site where a contextual link to each priority page would help a reader, and write the anchor text you would use.

    Deliverable: A table of priority pages, their current internal link count, three proposed link sources each, and the proposed anchor text.

    Check your work honestly against each point
    Write up your work and meet every point to finish.

    Sources

    Checked against these sources on 5 November 2026. Next review by 5 May 2027.

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