How many internal links per page?
There is no magic number — Google says so itself. But there is a sensible range for a page of a given length, and a point past which links start working against you. Type a word count to see both, and read below exactly where each number comes from.
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in-article links. Past 30 the page is over-linked: prune before adding.
Our rule of thumb, not an official number — Google gives none. See the evidence.
Type the article’s word count
Only the writing counts — menus and footers are not part of an article’s links.
Get a range, not a target
About one link per 300 words at the low end, one per 100 at the high end, and never fewer than two on any page.
Check what you have
Add the page’s current count to see whether it has room for more or should lose some.
What the evidence says
There is no official number. Google’s link documentation says there is no magical ideal number of links on a page — and that if a page looks like it has too many, it probably does.1 The once-famous “keep it under 100 links” came from an old technical limit (Google used to read only the first 100KB of a page) and was dropped long ago.2
Too many dilutes. Google’s John Mueller has said that linking everything to everything blurs a site’s structure, and that a clear hierarchy plus contextual links to related pages works better.3
The best data is about links in, not out. Zyppy’s study of 23 million internal links on 1,800 sites found pages got more search clicks as the links pointing to them grew, up to roughly 40–50, then fewer.4 That is a correlation, and it counts links into a page. Nobody has published good data on how many links a page should carry out.
So the range below is our rule, not a law. It is the budget Silotree itself uses when it suggests links: a link needs a sentence that genuinely points at another page, and a longer article has more of those.
How the range is worked out
- Top of the range: one in-article link per 100 words, and never fewer than two on any page.
- Bottom of the range: one per 300 words. Below that, a long post usually has related reading it is not pointing to.
- Over-linked: more than twice the top of the range, and at least eight links. Past that we suggest pruning before adding.
- Links to other websites count too: a paragraph full of links reads the same whichever site they go to.
The range at common lengths
| Words | Recommended links | Over-linked at |
|---|---|---|
| 300 | 1–3 | 8+ |
| 600 | 2–6 | 13+ |
| 1,000 | 3–10 | 21+ |
| 1,500 | 5–15 | 31+ |
| 2,000 | 6–20 | 41+ |
| 3,000 | 10–30 | 61+ |
| 5,000 | 16–50 | 101+ |
What matters more than the number
Every page you care about needs at least one link from another page — Google’s one firm rule.1 The words of each link should describe the page it points to, not say “click here”, and not be stuffed with keywords.1 A post with four links in the right sentences beats one with fifteen sprinkled anywhere.
Our guide to how many internal links a page should have goes deeper, with examples. To check the wording of the links you already have, run the anchor text analyser; for a quick overall read of your linking habits, take the internal linking health quiz. Want the count for every page at once? The free audit reads your whole site, and Silotree applies this same budget to every link it suggests.
How this compares with other free tools
As each tool’s own page described it when we checked on 11 October 2026. Tools change — if a line here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
| Tool | Limits | Menu and footer links kept apart? |
|---|---|---|
| This tool | Instant, in your browser; the range is labelled as our rule | Counts links in the writing only |
| Linkilo internal link ratio calculator | Manual inputs; bands are its own rule of thumb | Asks you to leave menu links out yourself |
Sources
Each one is labelled with how much weight it can bear. Where the evidence is thin, the page says so.
- Google documentation Google Search Central — Link best practices for Google (updated Dec 2025). Every page you care about should be linked from at least one other page; there is no ideal number of links; anchor text should be descriptive, concise and not stuffed with keywords.
- Google, said publicly Matt Cutts — How many links per page? (Mar 2009). The old ‘about 100 links’ guidance came from Google once reading only the first 100KB of a page; it no longer applies, and usability should decide.
- Google, said publicly Search Engine Journal — Google cautions against using too many internal links (Jul 2021). John Mueller: linking everything to everything blurs a site's structure; a clear hierarchy plus contextual links to related pages works better.
- Study Zyppy (Cyrus Shepard) — 23 million internal links: SEO case study. Across 1,800 sites, pages with more internal links pointing to them got more Search Console clicks up to roughly 40–50 links; varied link text went with more clicks. Correlation, not proof.
About the internal links per page calculator
How many internal links should a blog post have?
Google gives no number. As a rule of thumb — ours — between one link per 300 words and one per 100 words of writing: about 5 to 15 for a 1,500-word post. Fewer and a long post usually has related reading it isn't pointing to; many more and each link is worth less.
Is there a maximum number of links per page?
Not a hard one. Google's link documentation says there is no ideal number and that a page which seems to have too many links probably does. The old “100 links per page” guidance came from a technical limit that no longer exists.
How many internal links should point to a page?
Also no official number. In one large study, pages got more search clicks as links pointing to them grew, up to roughly 40–50. Every page you care about should have at least one.
Do menu and footer links count?
They are links, but not toward this. They repeat on every page and you set them once. This range is for links inside the article — the ones you choose post by post.
Where does the range come from?
It is the link budget Silotree uses when it suggests links: one per hundred words at most, at least two on any page, and “over-linked” past twice that (and at least eight). It is our rule; the evidence above explains why it is reasonable and where the evidence runs out.
Same scan, other questions
- Keyword cannibalization checkerSearches two or more of your pages compete for, with the page to keep.
- Orphan page finderPages no article links to, dead ends, and your sitemap against your links.
- Internal links to a pageEvery link into and out of one page, with the words each link uses.
- Click depth checkerHow many clicks each page sits from your home page, counting only links in your writing.
- Anchor text analyzerGeneric, repetitive and conflicting link text in your articles.
- Internal linking health quizTen questions, a score out of 100, and what to fix first.
- Which internal linking plugin?An honest picker — it recommends other tools where they fit better.
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