Search engine optimization (SEO) covers many signals and technical details, but links are one of the easiest concepts for a beginner to understand. Links help people move through a website, help search engines discover pages, and give context about what the linked page contains. If you're new to SEO, learning the basic link types gives you a useful foundation before you move into deeper topics such as crawling, content, site architecture and technical SEO.
This guide explains internal, outbound, navigational, anchor, contextual and image links. It also separates those links from backlinks, which belong to linking between different websites and are often discussed under link building.
Internal Linking: Connecting Pages on Your Own Website
Think of your website as a small town. Without internal links, useful pages can become hard for both visitors and crawlers to reach. An internal link points from one page on your site to another page on the same site.
Internal links help people discover related content and help search engines understand how pages connect. For example, a beginner article about SEO services can naturally point readers to an explanation of SEO pricing when cost becomes the next logical question. Internal links can also pass signals between pages, commonly described as "link equity."
A clear site structure is also easier to crawl and can make indexing more straightforward. That does not mean every internal link automatically improves rankings. Google's guidance is more practical: make important pages reachable from other findable pages and use concise, relevant anchor text so people and Google can understand the destination. (Google Search Central) A practical beginner check is to look for important pages that have no internal links pointing to them, links with vague text such as “click here,” and repeated links that do not help the reader. Fixing those issues can make the site easier to navigate without turning internal linking into a numbers game.
Outbound Linking: Sending Readers to Other Websites
Outbound links point from your website to a different website. Their main job is not to create a ranking boost. They are useful when they help readers verify a claim, reach a primary source, or explore a topic in more depth.
Choose directly relevant sources and make the link useful in context. For ordinary editorial links, Google says you generally do not need a special rel attribute. Paid placements should use rel="sponsored"; user-generated links can use rel="ugc"; and nofollow is available when you do not want to imply the normal relationship with the linked page. Google treats these attributes as signals about the nature of the link, not as a simple on/off switch that means the link will never be discovered. (Google Search Central)
Navigational Links: Making the Site Easy to Explore
Navigational links are the links in menus, footers, sidebars and other persistent navigation areas. They help people find important sections quickly and help crawlers move through the site.
Good navigation is simple enough to understand at a glance. Key service, product and information pages should be reachable through a logical structure, but putting a page in the main menu is not a guarantee that it will rank better. Google says its systems analyze site link structure, and useful internal links with concise anchor text can help both users and search systems understand important destinations.
Breadcrumbs are another form of navigation. They represent a page's position in the site hierarchy rather than the exact path a visitor personally took to get there. Google's breadcrumb documentation recommends using a typical user path through the hierarchy. (Google Search Central) Clear navigation is also a core UI/UX design concern because findability affects both search discovery and the human experience.
Anchor Links: Jumping to a Section on the Same Page
Anchor links can send a visitor directly to a section of a long page. They are useful for guides, FAQs, tables of contents and other pages where readers may want to skip to a specific topic.
The benefit is primarily usability. Anchor links can make long content easier to scan and navigate, but there is no need to claim that keeping someone on the page longer automatically improves rankings. Use descriptive labels, make sure the destination is clear, and add anchor links only where they genuinely reduce effort for the reader.
Contextual Linking: Adding Relevant Links Inside the Content
Contextual links appear inside the body of a page. They can be internal or external, but the important feature is that the link is directly related to the surrounding sentence or paragraph.
Contextual links are useful because the reader can understand why the destination matters at that exact moment. Search engines can also use link text and surrounding context to understand relationships between pages. The goal is relevance, not forcing a keyword into every paragraph. A strong content strategy usually creates natural opportunities to connect related guides, services and supporting sources without making the page feel overlinked. When you add a link, ask whether the destination answers the next question a reader is likely to have. That simple test usually produces better links than choosing destinations only because they contain a target keyword.
Image Links: When the Image Itself Is Clickable
Image links are images placed inside a link. They can be useful in navigation, product cards, portfolios and other visual interfaces where the image is the natural thing to click.
For SEO and accessibility, describe the image with useful alt text when the image conveys information. Google notes that when an image is used as a link, its alt text can also function as anchor text for the linked destination. Avoid stuffing keywords into alt attributes, and make sure the linked page matches what the image suggests. (Google Search Central)
Backlinks vs. Links You Control
It helps to separate the links on your own site from backlinks. Internal, navigational, contextual, anchor and image links are largely under your control. A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Earning relevant backlinks is a separate link building discipline and usually depends on creating something worth citing, promoting it to the right audiences, and building legitimate relationships rather than manufacturing links.
For beginners, focus first on making your own site easy to crawl and understand. Then treat backlinks as part of a broader authority and discovery strategy, not as a substitute for useful content or sound site structure.
Linking Is Only One Part of SEO
Links matter, but they are only one part of SEO. Helpful content, keyword targeting, page structure, crawlability, technical health, mobile usability and clear site architecture all contribute to how well a site can be understood and discovered. Google's Search Essentials emphasizes people-first content, crawlable links and descriptive text rather than shortcuts or guaranteed ranking formulas. (Google Search Central) Beginners should treat linking as part of site organization and content usefulness, not as a stand-alone trick. A page can have excellent links and still underperform if the content does not satisfy the query or if technical problems prevent reliable crawling and indexing.
At Brand Vision, we provide SEO services alongside web design and development. If you're planning a larger change, our redesign your website guide explains the SEO checks to make before and after launch. Contact us if you want help reviewing how content, internal linking and technical SEO fit together on your site.
