Internal linking is a foundational part of SEO, a strategy that helps search engines understand your website structure and improves user experience. I am sure you already knew that. Everyone agrees that you have to add internal links to your articles.

But how many internal links per page is too many?

What’s the ideal number to boost your rankings without overwhelming users or diluting your page authority?

You should know that the answer is a lot simpler than you might think. We will quickly go through what internal links are, just in case you do not know. If this is you, read this article first. 

Then, we will learn how many internal links per page for SEO. 

What Are Internal Links?

We will keep this simple. Internal links are hyperlinks that connect one page of your website to another. These links help:

  • Guide users to related content
  • Spread link equity (authority) throughout your site
  • Signal content hierarchy and relationships to search engines

Common internal links include navigation menus, footers, contextual in-content links, and related post sections. Basically, any link on your site that points to another page on your site is an internal link.

How many internal links per page for SEO?

The Short Answer

There is NO fixed limit!

Google’s John Mueller has stated that there’s no specific limit to how many internal links a page can have. Technically, Google can crawl and index thousands of links on a single page. However, more isn’t always better. Too many links can:

  • Confuse users
  • Dilute the SEO value passed to each link
  • Signal poor content quality or structure

Instead of aiming for a specific number, aim for clarity and relevance. Simply put, you have to be smart about it. 

Best Practices: Ideal Internal Linking Strategy

While there’s no hard rule, I suggest the following easy-to-follow guidelines:

  • Stay under 100 internal links per page excluding navigation for simplicity and clarity (the situations in which you would need more are way too rare)
  • Use contextual links that naturally fit into the content, that add to it
  • Prioritize high-value pages (such as cornerstone content or conversion pages since these are the important ones for your business)
  • Use descriptive anchor text that helps users and search engines understand the link’s purpose
  • Avoid linking to every page from every page – it looks/is spammy and confuses site structure

Why Internal Link Quality Matters More Than Quantity

Search engines like Google follow internal links to understand site architecture and prioritize content. If your site has thousands of internal links but they’re randomly placed or irrelevant, they offer little SEO benefit. What they do is confuze search engines. You talk about how to choose a shoe and you link an article on how to choose a web camera? Confusing!

Quality internal linking can:

  • Improve crawl depth – you need to aim for all your important pages to be reachable by a visitor in a maximum of 3 clicks, regardless of the entry point
  • Boost the authority of key pages
  • Lower bounce rate by directing users to more useful content
  • Help orphaned pages (pages with no internal links) get indexed

Tools to Audit Internal Links

To ensure your internal linking is effective, it is a very good idea to use tools. While you could do everything manually in a spreadsheet, if when the site grows and you have hundreds of articles, the tool will speed things up. Some great options to consider include:

These tools can help you spot broken links, overused anchor text, and pages with too few or too many links. 

Final Thoughts

There’s no magic number for how many internal links you should have per page, but the sweet spot for most pages falls between 5 and 30 contextual links, depending on content length and relevance. The goal is to create a logical, user-friendly path through your website that benefits both users and search engines. Simply put, every single internal link you add needs to provide extra or related information. It is as simple as that.

So next time you publish a page, don’t just ask “how many internal links is enough?” ask “Is this helpful to the reader and to Google’s understanding of my site?”

That’s what truly matters.

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