Is It Possible to Have Too Many Internal Links?

You can definitely have too much of a good thing. Ice cream, for instance. But what about internal links? They’re certainly a good thing – any competent SEO or CRO strategy will feature them heavily.

Not only do they help users navigate a website efficiently, improving the user experience, but they can also offer significant ranking benefits. By establishing a clear hierarchy and structure for your website, internal links make it easier for search engines to determine which pages are most relevant for specific terms, in turn allowing them to rank more highly in the SERPs. Working alongside a sitemap, internal links essentially act as signposts, directing both users and crawlers around your website in the most frictionless way possible.

Clearly, internal linking is important. But by focusing on it too heavily and getting a little too trigger-happy, is it possible to place too many internal links on your site and prevent it from ranking highly? Let’s find out.

Can too many internal links hurt SEO?

In a word, yes. Just like ice cream (or keywords for that matter), it’s absolutely possible to have too many internal links on your website. Even with the best intentions, you can overdo internal linking to the point that your site’s rankings are negatively impacted. But don’t just take our word for it: Google themselves have confirmed this previously.

Speaking in 2021, Google Search Advocate John Mueller said: “If all pages are linked to all other pages on the website, where you essentially have complete internal linking across every single page, then there’s no real structure there.”

Elaborating, he explained that if a website has a “giant mass of pages” that are all linked to one another, it’s hard for Google’s crawlers to work out which pages are most important. As a result, the significance of each internal link is diminished: Google doesn’t know which links matter most, so it pays less attention to each one.

It’s kind of like sitting through an in-depth lecture or PowerPoint presentation. Our brains can only absorb so much information at any one time, so if there are just a few, impactful slides, we’re more likely to take all of that information in. If we’re bombarded with too much information over 30-plus slides, it’s less likely that we’ll remember all of the information we’ve been presented with.

Mueller continued: “If you dilute the value of your site structure by having so many internal links that we don’t see a structure anymore, then that does make it harder for us to understand what you think is important on your website.

“If you tell search engines pretty clearly and directly, this is my primary page, and from there you link to different categories and the categories link to different products, then it’s a lot easier for us to understand that if someone is looking for this category of product, this is that page that we should be showing in the search results.”

So, in summary, you can absolutely have too many internal links on your site. It’s better to give each link some thought and only link to the most relevant and important pages than to fill every page with hundreds of links, just because you can. More ≠ better.

What is the ideal number of internal links on a page?

We hate to disappoint, but there’s no clear-cut, one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Every website is different and every piece of content is different, so it’s hard to clearly define the ‘ideal’ number of internal links that should be present on each page. Here are a few tips to help you work out the internal linking frequency that’s right for you.

• Try not to place multiple internal links right next to each other in a piece of text
• Avoid linking to the same page multiple times in the same piece of content
• Only add internal links when they make sense from a user’s perspective – don’t add them just for the sake of it
• Remember that the more internal links you add to a page, the less importance Google crawlers will place on each one. It’s better to place the right links in the right places than to add dozens of links to every page
• Consider the hierarchy of your site when adding internal links. Linking parent and child pages together is a great way to reinforce your site’s structure and improve rankings
• Always consider the context. If you’re writing a blog discussing a particular type of product, add links to relevant product pages within the blog

Don’t lose sight of the user experience

When formulating an internal linking strategy, it’s all too easy to get hung up on SEO. But as we discussed earlier, there’s more to internal linking than just search rankings: they can have a real impact on the user-friendliness of a website too. Think about using internal linking as a subtle CTA, helping your users reach the desired destination.

Whether you’re formulating an in-depth internal linking strategy or are simply writing blogs to market your small business, always keep the end user in mind. Who will be reading each piece of content, and which direction will they want to head in next? For example, if a user is reading a fridge freezer buying guide, they’re probably going to want to start shopping around for fridge freezers next. Not ovens or microwaves. They already have an oven and a microwave.

Basing your internal linking approach on the needs of users is a great way to simultaneously improve your site’s user experience and ensure you remain in Google’s good books.