Keep this in mind
Link where the next page is useful. Use a real destination and text that tells the reader what they will find.
Follow a reader’s journey
Consider our fictional pottery studio. A reader who opens a class guide may want to see the schedule, check materials or read the cancellation policy. These are different questions with different destinations. The links should make those choices clear, not send every visitor back to the homepage.
Draw a small map with the homepage, class guide, schedule and policy. Mark how a visitor gets from one to the next. If an important page has no incoming link from another relevant page, look for a sensible place to add one. Google’s link guidance recommends that every page you care about has a link from at least one other page on your site.
An inventory is more useful than adding links everywhere. If a page does not serve a clear purpose, first decide whether it should exist. A larger link count does not make an unclear website helpful.
Use an ordinary link to an ordinary URL
Google can generally crawl an HTML anchor element with an href attribute that points to a URL. A button with a click handler is not automatically a crawlable link. If a control navigates to another page, a real anchor is usually the straightforward choice. Buttons are appropriate for actions such as resetting a worksheet.
In HTML, a simple internal link can be written as <a href="/classes/">Beginner classes</a>. That path must resolve on your actual website. This is an example, not a route offered by SEO Fieldwork. Do not ship an empty destination or a bare hash just to make a design look interactive.
If your website relies on JavaScript, inspect the finished page and make sure links still have valid destinations. Our guides use ordinary internal anchors; the guide filter only changes which links are visible to the visitor. It does not create fake URLs.
Make the link text useful on its own
The visible text of a link is often called anchor text. “See beginner class dates” describes a destination. “Click here” does not. Write text that is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both the current page and the destination.
Context matters too. A natural sentence can explain why the next resource helps. For example: “If you are deciding which session to attend, see beginner class dates.” Avoid stuffing several keyword variations into the link, and do not chain adjacent links so closely that readers cannot distinguish them.
When an image acts as a link, its alternative text contributes to how the link is understood. Describe the meaningful destination or image function, not a string of unrelated search phrases. Decorative images should not be the only way to reach an important page.
Choose useful places, not a link quota
Navigation is for stable top-level choices. Body links connect a specific question to a specific answer. A related-guide link can give a reader a natural next step after finishing an article. Each placement has a different job. Do not fill them with duplicates simply to increase the number of links.
Google does not prescribe a magical ideal number of links per page in its link best practices. Use as many as help the reader, and remove distractions that do not. A short page with one well-chosen next step can be more useful than a page with an unrelated directory of destinations.
If you rename a page or change its URL, check the links pointing to it. Avoid redirect chains when you can update your own link directly. For a small website, clicking through your most important journeys is a practical first check before reaching for a large crawling tool.
Try it: walk the site without search
Start on the homepage and pretend you have never visited before. Can you reach the page that answers the main question? After reading it, can you find the next useful detail? Write down unclear labels, missing paths and links that land somewhere unexpected.
For the fictional studio, add a schedule link where the class guide explains timing. Rename a vague “More” link to “Read the class cancellation policy.” Then load those pages on a phone-width screen and confirm the links are readable and easy to activate.
Record the destination and intended reader benefit in your notes. Check the link after publishing. This worksheet method does not crawl your site or assign link authority; it helps you plan a useful path. Next, learn why a discoverable page can still have crawling or indexing restrictions.
Documentation behind this guide
Original explanations informed by these primary documents. Examples and worksheets are our own, not Google scoring methods.
- Google Search Central: Link best practices
- Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide
Primary documents reviewed October 8, 2026. Source destinations are not linked in this edition. Read our sourcing approach.