Internal and external links

Give the reader a reason to follow.

Internal links connect pages on the same website. A useful link leads to the next answer, a needed condition, supporting evidence or a relevant action, with wording that makes the destination clear.

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A worked example

Connect the delivery condition at the decision.

Imagine a fictional store whose product page says delivery is offered. The reader needs to check areas served and access requirements before ordering. This is a teaching example, with no real store offer or tested customer journey.

A link labelled “delivery areas and access requirements” explains the destination. “Click here” gives less context. A working homepage is still the wrong target when the promise concerns delivery conditions.

Place the route beside the relevant delivery statement. Keep the condition needed for the current decision in the local explanation, then link to the fuller answer. A remote footer route may be too late to help someone judge the purchase.

Check the destination’s content as well as its response. An unrelated promotion, old policy or permission wall cannot fulfil the promise merely because the URL responds.

Make the route usable

Use a real link for navigation.

A navigational link uses an anchor element with a destination in its href attribute. A button represents an action. Styling should not conceal the distinction, and a label alone does not provide a submission service.

Google’s link guidance describes crawlable link forms and descriptive anchors. This does not create a universal link quota or promise a ranking result.

• Check the requested and final URL, including an unexpected redirect.
• Read the answer or action reached while logged out.
• Check that a fragment points to an existing, useful target.
• Review keyboard focus and the result of activating the link.
• Keep link wording distinguishable from ordinary text.

A source inspection, public response and keyboard test answer different questions. One check does not certify all the others.

Maintain the connection

Review wording when a page’s role changes.

After a consolidation, find incoming routes to the previous page and compare them with the accepted new answer. Updating the URL alone can leave an anchor that promises the retired content.

Check fragments, unnecessary redirect chains and missing routes from relevant starting pages. Keep a useful contextual connection when it still serves the task; choose a replacement only after reading the replacement’s content.

A link graph is a representation of routes. A crawl describes the pages it reached under its recorded conditions. Neither proves that a reader completed a task or that a search system indexed every destination.

Use orphan page recovery, route refresh after consolidation and link graph review for those decisions.