Internal linking for a new blog: how many links and where
Link each new post from two pages Google already indexes, with descriptive anchors and hubs linked to spokes. How many links, where, and finding orphans.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·8 min read
An internal linking strategy for a new blog comes down to three rules: link every new post, on the day it goes up, from at least two pages Google already indexes; use anchor text that describes the page you are linking to; and connect each hub page with its spokes in both directions. Google's own guidance is that "every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site," and that "there's no magical ideal number of links a given page should contain."
Below is how many links to use, which pages should carry them, how to write the anchors, and how to catch the posts that slipped through with no links at all.
How many internal links should a blog post have?
There is no required number. Google says "there's no magical ideal number of links a given page should contain. However, if you think it's too much, then it probably is." For scale, the 2025 Web Almanac found the median desktop page had 43 links to its own site and the median mobile page 39, with navigation and footers included.
The Web Almanac figures are useful as a sanity check, not a target. At the 90th percentile they rise to 174 internal links on desktop and 161 on mobile, which the Almanac suggests may reflect larger, more complex sites. Those counts include menus, footers and sidebars that repeat on every page.
The links that do the work for a new post are the ones in its body text, where the surrounding sentence explains why the reader should follow them. A practical working range for a new blog is three to six contextual links out of each post: one to its hub, two to four to closely related posts, and one to a product page where it genuinely helps. More is fine when each one earns its place. What matters more than the count is that every post also receives links from elsewhere.
Which pages should link to a new post?
At least two pages Google has already crawled and indexed should link to each new post from the day it publishes. Google finds new URLs mainly on pages it has already crawled, so a post linked only from pages Google has never visited waits longer to be found. The best two are usually your blog index and the most closely related existing post.
Google's sitemap documentation explains why this matters most for a new site: "Googlebot and other web crawlers crawl the web by accessing URLs found in previously crawled pages. As a result, Googlebot might not discover your pages if no other sites link to them." A sitemap helps, but Google also says that if "your site's pages are properly linked, Google can usually discover most of your site."
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
What is an internal linking strategy?
It is a set of rules for which pages on your site link to which, and with what anchor text. For a new blog, the core rules are to link every new post from pages Google already indexes, use descriptive anchors, and connect hub pages and their spokes in both directions.
The blog index or category page the post belongs to, which is often automatic.
The hub page for the post's topic, with a line added in the right section.
The one or two older posts that a reader of the new post most needs, edited to link forward.
A product or feature page, if the post explains something that page mentions.
Check the linking pages are indexed before relying on them. In Search Console's URL Inspection tool, an indexed page shows "URL is on Google." A link from a page that is itself stuck in "Crawled, currently not indexed" does less for the new post; the guide to that status covers why internal links from indexed pages are one of the fixes.
How should you write internal anchor text?
Write anchor text that describes the page it points to, keep it reasonably short, and make it read sensibly out of context. Google calls good anchor text "descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it's on and to the page it links to," and lists "Click here", "Read more" and "website" as too generic.
Google's own test is easy to apply: "Try reading only the anchor text (out of context) and check if it's specific enough to make sense by itself." Most sites already do this on inner pages. The 2025 Web Almanac reports that inner pages passed the descriptive link text check on 92.42% of desktop sites and 93.45% of mobile sites.
Anchor
Verdict
Why
"click here"
Too generic
Says nothing about the target
"this article"
Too generic
Same problem
"how to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC"
Good
Names the target's subject
"our guide to fixing crawled, currently not indexed"
Good
Descriptive and concise
"best cheap fast SEO audit tool free online checker"
Stuffed
Google warns keyword stuffing violates its spam policies
A whole sentence wrapped in a link
Too long
Google's guidance flags "weirdly long" anchors
Two more rules from Google's guidance. Don't chain links next to each other ("it's harder for your readers to distinguish between links, and you lose surrounding text for each link"). And use real links: Google "can only crawl your link if it's an <a> HTML element... with an href attribute," so buttons and elements that navigate only through script events may not pass anything.
Keep anchors consistent per target. If two different posts are both linked with the anchor "internal linking guide," you are telling Google both pages are about the same thing. The keyword cannibalization guide covers how that confusion splits rankings.
How should hubs and spokes link to each other?
A hub page covers a topic broadly and links to every spoke, the posts that each cover one narrow question inside it. Every spoke links back to the hub with a descriptive anchor, and to one or two sibling spokes where a reader would naturally go next. That two-way structure means Google can reach any spoke from the hub and see how the pages relate.
The rules for a new blog:
Write or plan the hub first, even if it starts short.
When a spoke publishes, add a link to it in the hub's matching section on the same day.
In the spoke, link to the hub early, where the broader context is mentioned.
Link sideways only to siblings a reader of this spoke would actually want next.
Revisit the hub when it has five or more spokes, and reorganize its sections around them.
This is the structure the topic clusters guide goes into in full, including how to choose hubs.
How do you find orphan pages?
An orphan page is a page with no internal links pointing to it. Find them by comparing two lists: every URL in your sitemap, and every URL a crawler reaches by following links from your homepage. A URL in the first list but not the second has no link path from the rest of your site.
Any site crawler that exports the URLs it found will do for the second list. With both lists as plain text files, one URL per line, the comparison is two commands:
# URLs listed in the sitemap
curl -s https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml | grep -o '<loc>[^<]*' | sed 's/<loc>//' | sort -u > sitemap-urls.txt
# URLs your crawler reached from the homepage, exported to crawl-urls.txt
sort -u crawl-urls.txt > crawled.txt
# In the sitemap, never reached by links: orphans
comm -23 sitemap-urls.txt crawled.txt
Normalize the two lists first (same protocol, same trailing-slash style), or every URL looks like a mismatch. Run the comparison monthly on a new blog and after any redesign, because a template change can remove the links to a whole section at once. The orphan pages guide covers fixing them once found.
Which linking mistakes stop a link from counting?
Most internal links that fail are technical failures: the link is not a crawlable <a href>, its text only appears after JavaScript runs, or it points at a URL that redirects. Each takes a minute to check with your browser's view-source or Search Console's URL Inspection tool.
Script-only navigation. Google says it "can't reliably extract URLs from <a> elements that don't have an href attribute or other tags that perform as links because of script events."
Anchors inserted by JavaScript. Google's advice is to use the URL Inspection tool "to make sure it's present in the rendered HTML."
Image links with empty alt text. For an image used as a link, Google uses the image's alt attribute as the anchor text, so describe the target there.
Links to redirecting URLs. Point each link at the final URL so readers and crawlers skip the extra hop.
What should you do on the day a post goes live?
Treat linking as part of publishing, not a later clean-up. Before a post counts as done, it should link out to its hub and related posts, and at least two indexed pages should link to it. Doing both in the same session means no post ever starts life as an orphan.
In the new post, link to its hub with a descriptive anchor.
Add two to four links to related existing posts, spaced out in the text.
Add the new post to the hub's matching section.
Edit the one or two most related older posts to link forward to it.
Confirm the blog index or category page lists it.
Check that every link is a plain <a href> to the final URL, not a redirect.
Inspect the new URL in Search Console and request indexing once.
Link each new article while it is still a draft
A steady publishing rhythm makes day-one linking a habit rather than a backlog. LaunchScaler's content engine plans a month of articles on a calendar, "grouped into a handful of subjects your product owns," from your own Search Console queries, and writes one a day. By default, every draft waits in your workspace to rewrite, trim or scrap before it publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Shopify, Notion, Medium or a signed webhook, which is the moment to add the links above.
It costs $99/mo per website, with 3 days free before the first charge. Start the engine and your first draft is ready on day one.
Google says there's no magical ideal number. For reference, the 2025 Web Almanac found the median desktop page had 43 links to its own site, counting navigation and footer links, and the median mobile page had 39.
03
What is good anchor text for internal links?
Text that describes the page you are linking to, is reasonably short, and makes sense read on its own. Google lists 'Click here', 'Read more' and 'website' as too generic and warns against stuffing keywords into anchors.
04
How do you find orphan pages?
Compare the URLs in your sitemap with the URLs a crawler reaches by following links from your homepage. Any page in the sitemap that the crawl never reaches has no internal links pointing to it.
05
Do internal links help a new page get indexed?
They help Google find it. Google's crawlers discover URLs on pages they have already crawled, and Google says every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.
Keyword cannibalization is two of your pages competing for one query. Spot it in Search Console, then merge with a 301, differentiate, or re-point links.
Any Notion plan can make a Site indexable, but titles, descriptions and custom domains need a paid plan, and no schema or robots.txt setting is documented.
