Guide Topic clusters · 2 of 4
Internal Links: The 5-in, 8-out Rule
Every page needs links in as much as links out. The simple internal linking rule Dex uses on every site: 5+ links in, 5–8 out, and always back to the pillar.
Key takeaways
- Give every page at least 5 internal links pointing to it, and 5 to 8 links out to related pages.
- Supporting articles always link to their pillar; the pillar links to every supporting article.
- When you publish something new, go back and link to it from older pages. That's the step most sites skip.
- Use anchor text that says where the link goes. Never "click here".
The 5-in, 8-out rule is simple: every page on your site should have at least 5 internal links pointing to it, and each supporting article should link out to 5 to 8 related pages, including its pillar. It's the rule Dex applies to every cluster it builds, and it fixes the most common internal linking problem: pages nobody links to.
Why links in matter as much as links out
When people think about internal links, they think about the links they add to a new article. That's half the job.
Google uses links to find pages and to understand what they're about. Its documentation is direct about it: "Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site." A new article that links to five older ones, but that no older page links back to, is easy to miss. That's an orphan page, and most blogs have more of them than they think.
So the rule has two numbers on purpose:
| Rule | Target | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Links in | 5 or more | Every page |
| Links out | 5–8 | Supporting articles |
| Pillar → supporting articles | all of them | Pillar guides |
| Supporting article → pillar | always | Supporting articles |
These are Dex's house rules, not a Google requirement. They're there to make sure the important pages are always reachable, from more than one place.
Why cap links out at 8?
Google says there's no ideal number of links on a page, but if a page seems to have too many, it probably does. A supporting article of 1,000 to 1,500 words has room for 5 to 8 links that are genuinely useful to the reader. Past that, links stop being help and start being noise.
Pillars are the exception. A pillar links to every supporting article in its topic cluster, so it can go higher.
The step everyone skips: linking back
Here's what Dex does every time an article goes live:
- Link the new article to its pillar.
- Link the pillar to the new article.
- Find one to three older articles where the new one genuinely answers a follow-up question, and add a link in the body.
- Re-count. Any page under 5 links in goes on the list for the next round.
Step 3 is where the "links in" count comes from. It's also why Dex audits inbound links weekly, not just when something is published: clusters grow, and the oldest pages quietly fall behind.
How to write the link itself
- Describe the destination. Google recommends anchor text that is "descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant". Compare "see how keyword difficulty is calculated" with "click here".
- Link where the question comes up. The best place for a link is the sentence where a reader would naturally want to know more.
- One link per destination per page. Linking the same page three times doesn't add anything.
- Use real links. Google generally follows
<a>elements with anhref. Links built only with JavaScript click handlers may not be followed.
Anchor text: good and bad examples
| Instead of | Write | Why |
|---|---|---|
| click here | see how keyword difficulty is calculated | Says where the link goes |
| this article | our guide to topic clusters | Describes the destination |
| best coffee shop new york best coffee nyc | the best coffee shops in New York | Reads like a sentence, not a keyword list |
| learn more | how much a coffee cart costs | Specific enough to be useful out of context |
A quick test from Google's own guidance: read the link text on its own. If you can't tell what's on the other side, rewrite it.
Where links should live
Not all links do the same job:
- In the body text. The most valuable links: they come with context, from the sentence around them. This is where the 5-in, 8-out rule counts.
- In "related" boxes and cluster lists. Useful for readers and for crawlers. This blog shows every article in the cluster beside the text, so no page is ever more than one click from its siblings.
- In menus and footers. They make important pages reachable from everywhere, but they say little about any single page.
- In breadcrumbs. They show where a page sits: Blog › Topic clusters › this article.
Common internal linking mistakes
- Linking only to new posts. Old pages that still earn traffic are your best sources of links; use them.
- Using the same anchor text for different pages. It blurs which page answers which search.
- Linking to redirects or broken URLs. Point links straight at the final URL.
- Hiding links behind JavaScript. Menus or buttons that only work with a script may not be followed, by Google or by the crawlers behind AI answers.
- Never revisiting. Links are added once and forgotten while the site grows around them.
Finding your orphan pages
You can do this by hand on a small site: list every URL from your sitemap, then for each one, search your site for links to it. Pages with zero results are orphans. Pages with one or two are next in line.
On a bigger site, use a crawler, or let an AI SEO agent like Dex do it: it builds the link graph of every page on your site, flags anything under the target, and proposes the exact sentence where a new link fits. Next in this cluster: how to find keywords you can actually win.
FAQ
Is there a maximum number of internal links per page?
+
Google says there's no ideal number, but a page that seems to have too many links probably does. Dex caps supporting articles at 8 links out so each one still means something.
Do internal links in the footer or menu count?
+
They help crawlers find pages, but links inside the body text, next to the sentence that explains why they're relevant, carry far more context for readers and search engines.
What is an orphan page?
+
A page with no internal links pointing to it. Search engines may not find it, and readers can't. Fixing orphans is usually the quickest internal linking win.
Sources
- SEO link best practices for Google · Google Search Central
Dex SEO is an AI SEO agent for small businesses. Every article here is planned from search data, drafted by Dex, fact-checked against the sources it cites, and reviewed by the team before it is published.
How this article was made: drafted with AI, fact-checked against the sources listed above, then edited and approved by the Dex SEO team.