How to Interlink Your Blog Posts In 2026 (Beginner’s Guide)

Most bloggers don’t realize the importance of interlinking. It is essential to rank better in Google search results.

In this Google Panda world, you must focus on targeting the right keywords to interlink professionally and reap the rewards from the search engines.

In this article, we’ll discuss everything from scratch to interlink like a pro. Without much ado, let’s get into the details.

What is Interlink In SEO?

what is interlinking

In simple terms, linking to your own blog posts is called internal linking. Most new bloggers don’t use internal linking effectively, which prevents them from driving more traffic to their older posts. As a result, those articles get buried without gaining additional search traffic.

When done correctly, internal linking helps you attract more search traffic for related keywords and improves the overall user experience. Readers often appreciate additional relevant resources when they’re searching for information.

Why Should You Consider Internal Linking?

interlinking like a pro

Before diving into how to use internal links effectively, let’s understand why internal linking is essential for your blog’s growth.

Internal linking offers several important benefits:

  1. Drive More Organic Traffic

Internal links help search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo discover and understand your content better. By linking to relevant pages within your blog, you can improve visibility and drive additional organic traffic to important posts.

  1. Improve Keyword Rankings

Using descriptive anchor text in your internal links helps search engines understand what a page is about. When you strategically link using relevant keywords, your pages have a better chance of ranking higher for those targeted search terms.

  1. Distribute Link Equity Across Your Site

Internal links pass authority (often called link equity) from strong pages to other important posts. This helps older or less visible articles gain more SEO value and improves their chances of ranking in search results.

  1. Increase Page Views and Reduce Bounce Rate

When readers find helpful internal links within your content, they’re more likely to explore additional articles. This increases page views, improves engagement, and reduces bounce rates.

  1. Help Search Engines Crawl Your Website Efficiently

Search engine bots follow internal links to crawl and index your website. A strong internal linking structure ensures that all your important pages are easily discovered and indexed over time.

Here Are the Top Ways to Do Internal Linking Like a Pro

Here are some easy-to-follow internal linking tips for 2026:

1. Place Internal Links at the Beginning of Your Articles

Do you know one of the simplest secrets to improving your search rankings through internal links?

Place important internal links near the beginning of your article.

Search engine crawlers usually pay close attention to links that appear early in the content, especially right after the introduction or below the heading section.

If you want to rank higher for your target keywords, start interlinking relevant posts naturally within the first few paragraphs of your article.

Best Practice:

Add 2–3 highly relevant internal links in the introduction.

Link only to closely related articles.

Avoid forcing links just for SEO purposes.

2. Use WordPress Plugins for Smart Internal Linking

If you want to streamline your internal linking strategy, using WordPress plugins can save a lot of time and effort.

Here are some of the best internal linking plugins for WordPress in 2026:

A) Yoast SEO (Premium Version)

Yoast SEO is one of the most popular SEO plugins used by millions of WordPress users worldwide. The premium version includes a powerful internal linking suggestions feature that:

  • Analyzes your content automatically
  • Detects important keywords
  • Suggests relevant internal links instantly
  • Allows drag-and-drop linking inside the editor

Once your article is completed, Yoast scans your content and recommends related posts you can link to without leaving the WordPress dashboard. You can also compare free vs premium features to decide which version fits your needs.

B) Internal Link Juicer

If you’re searching for a free internal linking plugin, Internal Link Juicer is a great option.

Key features include:

  • Assign keywords to specific URLs
  • Automatic internal linking
  • Bulk keyword uploads
  • Option to create nofollow links (useful for affiliate or external links)

This plugin helps automate internal linking without manual effort.

C) Interlinks Manager

Interlinks Manager is a premium plugin available on CodeCanyon designed exclusively for internal linking optimization.

Key features include:

  • Automatic internal link suggestions
  • Link juice calculation
  • Auto-insertion of internal links
  • Internal link click tracking and analytics

It’s ideal for bloggers who want detailed insights into their internal link performance.

3. Make Use of Related Posts

Another effective internal linking strategy is displaying related blog posts within your content. Internal linking becomes easier when you clearly understand how your existing content connects to the article you’re currently writing.

Tips for better related post linking:

  • Link only to highly relevant articles.
  • Use contextual anchor text.
  • Maintain a logical content flow.
  • Regularly update older posts with new internal links.

At first, internal linking may feel difficult, but with consistent practice, you’ll naturally start recognizing opportunities to connect your content effectively.

3 Important Things to Remember:

Here are a few of the most important things to remember while linking your blog posts in 2026.

1. Disable Self-Pingbacks In WordPress

There’s a common issue when interlinking your blog posts in WordPress: self-pingbacks.

It simply means that whenever you link to your old blog posts, you create a self-pingback, which usually shows up in the comments section of the post.

So whenever you do interlinking on your blog, you’ll get a new comment in the comments section, which appears to be the post link as a new comment. These are known as self-pingbacks.

They completely clutter up your comment section, and most people don’t like it.

If you’re also one among them who hates to see self-pingbacks while linking, you can install a WordPress plugin called No Self Pings.

The plugin is completely free to use. Once you install and activate it, there’s nothing new you can do, as it works out of the box and automatically disables self-pingbacks.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to use an extra plugin to disable self-pings, you can insert the following code. Copy and paste the following code in your WordPress theme’s functions.php file to disable self-pingbacks.

function no_self_ping( &$links ) {

$home = get_option( ‘home’ );

foreach ( $links as $l => $link )

if ( 0 === strpos( $link, $home ) )

unset($links[$l]);

}

add_action( ‘pre_ping’, ‘no_self_ping’ );

That’s it, you’re done. You will no longer get self-pingbacks while interlinking blog posts in WordPress, that too without using a plugin.

2. The Importance of Anchor Text

Google states that, “the number of internal links pointing to a page is a signal to search engines about the relative importance of that page”. That’s why you should always include a few internal links to other blog posts on your site that are relevant to the topic you’re covering.

Here’s where the importance of anchor text also comes into play. The anchor text is the visible and clickable text in a hyperlink, and the anchor text can literally determine the ranking of the page to which it links.

Google also looks at the anchor text of internal links to better understand the context of your blog post or page.

In simple terms, anchor text helps both search engines and users to find relevant contextual information about the content of the link.

Have a look at the following illustration.

interlink example

In the above example, “tiny dancing horse” is the anchor text for the link.

There are several types of anchor texts, including;

  • Naked links (such as https://bloggerspassion.com)
  • Generic links (such as “Read more”, “Click here”, and so on)
  • Image links (whenever an image is linked within your blog, Google will use the text contained in the image’s ALT tag as the anchor text)
  • Branded links (BloggersPassion linking to an article on the BloggersPassion blog with the anchor text “BloggersPassion”).
  • Partial match keyword links (includes specific keywords such as “WordPress SEO tips” linking to a page about WordPress SEO)

Pro tip: It’s always better to use a partial match, keyword-rich link while interlinking to your older blog posts. Just make sure to use a partial match primary keyword which is relevant to the target page that you’re linking.

3. Interlinking Best Practices

Intelligent linking is a skill that can be improved with practice. Here are a few best practices you can use to improve your site’s SEO by also providing a great experience to your users.

Use Google Search:

There are a ton of incredible Google tricks and tips you can use to better link to your older, relevant posts on your blog.

You can simply use a search string on Google like “site:yourblogname.com category or keyword” to find all the relevant blog posts on your blog about a particular topic.

Use the Silos concept

Use the silos concept while linking to your older blog posts. If you’re wondering about what silos are and how they can help you with SEO, you can read this detailed post on Silos for SEO to know more in detail.

The concept here is to find and link to relevant posts from the same category.

For instance, let’s say you have 3 categories on your blog, including affiliate marketing, SEO, and web hosting, and if you’re writing a blog post around SEO, make sure to include internal links related to that particular category (silo) for better crawlability and user experience.

Quick note: You can add a nofollow on the links to your feed, such as RSS feeds, because it’s not really helpful to have RSS feeds in web search results.


Final Thoughts

Internal links are extremely crucial if you want to boost your website’s SEO in 2026 and beyond. If you’re publishing new blog posts without including internal links to other posts on your site, you’re making a huge mistake.

Not only does interlinking help you pass link juice to other pages, but it also improves crawlability and user engagement on your site.


FAQs About Internal Linking

Here are a few essential questions about interlinking blog posts in WordPress that you might want to know to better understand.

Should I open my internal links in the same tab or a new tab?

Most of the authority sites open their interlinks in the same tab, while a few bloggers prefer opening them in new tabs. At Bloggers Passion, we open all links (internal and external) in new tabs. The reason is to provide a better reading experience for our target audience.

Should I focus on users or search crawlers while internal linking?

Internal links have 2 significant benefits: they help you with a better user reading experience and also pass link juice, so you get additional SEO benefits.
But when it comes to pleasing users and search engines, always prefer people. Don’t add an internal link just for the sake of it. Only do it if it adds value to whatever the content your website audience is reading.

How many internal links should I include within a page?

There’s no rule. Actually, there used to be a rule in the Google guidelines not to use more than 100 links per page, but they removed it, so you can use as many as you want.

Is it okay to publish a blog post without adding any internal links?

Yes, you can publish a post or page without any internal links. No issues with that. But if you really want to pass link juice to other internal pages on your site that are relevant to the topic you’re covering, you should use internal links.

Should I add nofollow tags to my internal links?

BIG NO, Don’t use nofollow tags on your internal links as you should let link juice flow freely throughout your website for better rankings.

Where should I use the nofollow tag?

A nofollow tag is used when you don’t want search engine crawlers to count the link juice flowing through a specific web page (in such a case, you can use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on your link tag).


Avatar for Anil Agarwal
About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of BloggersPassion and a full-time blogger, SEO expert, and digital marketing strategist with over 20 years of hands-on experience building real online businesses. He has helped 100,000+ bloggers and entrepreneurs build money-making websites through proven SEO strategies, affiliate marketing, and content-driven growth systems. His work...

Reader Comments (20)

  1. I’ve been following Bloggerpassion for a long time now these posts are something people usually ignore but are super important and I’ve learned a lot from this blog post as well.

    My question is should we add a CATAGORY or mildly related post or even outbound link that is related to our post but in no way a source of inspiration to our blog post in interlinking? as my blog is new and there are no more than 20 posts and counting.
    Should I interlink a single post multiple times as in different posts??

    Also, what plugin do you use for FAQ?

    • Hari, you can link to your posts from multiple posts. Avoid linking to the same post multiple times from the same content. We are showing faqs via Rank Math plugin. Thanks

  2. Hi Anil,

    Thanks for the nice article.
    I was wondering whether to create pillar content or various small posts & connect them together?
    Any thoughts on this?

    Thanks for your time.

  3. Informative post about interlinks. Usually, I link posts using anchor texts, full post titles, and related post links. Different types of linking will help you to improve page views and reduce bounce rates.

    Yoast SEO is a prominent plugin to optimize pages for search engines as well as social media. You can also consider Rank Math to do the same job including internal link suggestions.

    All the best,

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