Internal linking for a service business website
How to link the pages of a service business website so customers and Google can find every service: structure, anchor text, what to link and a simple audit.
Make sure every page you care about is linked from at least one other page with a normal link, as Google recommends. Link each service page from the homepage or menu and from related services and guides. Link guides to the service they help someone choose. Use anchor text that says where the link goes, such as “hot water system replacement”, not “click here”. Then check now and then for pages nothing links to, broken links and important pages buried several clicks deep.
Internal links are the links from one page of your website to another. They are how customers move from a question to an answer to an enquiry, and they are one of the main ways Google discovers and understands your pages. They cost nothing but some attention, which is why they are worth getting right.
What Google says
Google’s link guidance is short and practical:
- Every page you care about should be linked from at least one other page on your site.
- Use normal links. Google can generally only follow links that are standard HTML links with an address. Buttons that only work through scripts may not be followed.
- Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both pages. Generic text like “click here” or “read more” tells people little. Keyword stuffing is against Google’s spam policies.
- There is no ideal number of links. If a page seems to have too many, it probably does.
A simple structure for a service business
| Page | Link from | Link to |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage | Every page (logo or menu) | Each main service, proof of work, contact |
| Service page | Homepage, menu, related services, guides that help people choose it | Related services, relevant proof, contact or quote |
| Guide or blog post | The blog index, related guides, the service it supports | The service it helps someone choose, related guides |
| Case study or project | Relevant service pages | The service used, contact |
| Contact or quote page | Every service page and the menu | Nothing essential; keep people on the form |
Two gaps to look for: guides that never mention the service they relate to, and service pages that nothing except the menu links to. A short, natural link in each direction fixes both.
Writing anchor text
| Example | |
|---|---|
| Too generic | For more information, click here. |
| Stuffed | Call the best plumber Sydney emergency plumber Sydney cheap plumber today. |
| Useful | We also do hot water system replacements (with those four words as the link). |
Vary the wording naturally. If every link to a page uses the identical phrase, it reads oddly to people. Try Google’s test: read only the link text, out of context, and see whether it still says where it goes.
Links that are worth adding
- From each guide to the service it is about, placed where the reader would naturally want it.
- Between services customers often need together, such as a switchboard upgrade and solar installation.
- From project write-ups to the service used.
- From your best-performing pages in Search Console to newer pages on related topics.
On this site, for example, our guide to SEO for tradies links to the SEO services page, and the services page links back to related guides.
A simple internal link audit
- List your main service pages. Is each linked from the homepage or menu and from at least one other relevant page?
- Is any page you care about linked from nowhere except the sitemap? That is an orphan page.
- Do any links go to pages that now return errors or redirect? Update them to the final address.
- Can someone reach every main service within a couple of clicks from the homepage?
- Are links normal text or image links, not buttons that only work with scripts?
A crawler such as Screaming Frog, or the links report in Search Console, can help with larger sites. On a site with twenty or thirty pages, a careful read-through with a list often does the job.
What internal links will not do
Links help pages get found and understood. They will not make a thin page useful. If a page is not indexed or not ranking, check the page itself too; our guide to why service pages are not indexed walks through that. For the wider checklist, see technical SEO for small businesses.
Sources
- Link best practices for GoogleGoogle Search Central, accessed 28 October 2026. Crawlable a elements with href, descriptive anchor text, every important page linked from at least one other page, no ideal number of links
- SEO Starter GuideGoogle Search Central, accessed 28 October 2026