Internal linking: which of your pages Google can reach, and which it thinks matter.
Google finds your pages by following links from your other pages, and it judges how important a page is partly by how many of your pages point at it. A cabins page linked only from the footer in eight-point gray looks unimportant. A cabins page linked from the homepage, the sites page, and the rates page looks like something you want people to find.
IN ONE PARAGRAPH
Internal links are the links between pages on your own site. They do two jobs: they let Google discover pages, and they tell Google which pages matter, based on how many links point to a page and the words used in those links. Park sites commonly have orphan pages that nothing links to, money pages like cabins and monthly rates reachable only from the footer, and link text like "click here" that says nothing. A crawl sees the links that exist but not whether the structure makes sense; that takes a person looking at the map of the site.
What good structure looks like
The homepage links to every main page in the body text and the menu, not just the footer. Each main page links to its neighbors where it makes sense: the sites page mentions cabins and links there; the cabins page mentions the sites and the rates. Articles and seasonal pages link back to the page that books, with link text that says what the destination is: "see the pull-through sites," not "click here." Every page is reachable in two clicks from the homepage. Nothing is reachable only from the footer.
What it looks like on a park website
- A cabins page that exists but is linked only from a footer menu, so Google visits it rarely and ranks it low.
- A winter camping page written last year that no page links to at all. Google may not know it exists.
- Every link reading "Learn more" or "Click here," so the links carry no meaning.
- A blog with thirty posts that never link to the sites page or the book button.
- A rates page linked from the menu but from no page body, so the strongest signal it gets is a menu item.
What it costs a park
The orphaned cabins page does not rank for "cabins near [town]" even if it is well written, because Google reads it as unimportant. The blog posts that never link to the booking page bring readers who leave without a path to book. Fixing the structure costs nothing and is the most skipped step on park sites.
How to check your own
- List your pages from the sitemap. For each, ask: which other pages link to this one, in the body text? If the answer is none or only the footer, it is weak.
- Read the link text on your homepage. If most of it is "Learn more," rewrite it to say where the link goes.
- In Google Search Console, the Links report shows internal links per page. The pages at the bottom are the weak ones.
What we do about it
Every site we build has a deliberate structure: the homepage links to every main page in the body, the main pages cross-link, every article ends at the booking page, and link text says what it points to. We run an internal linking pass on each new page we add and once a quarter across the site, because structure drifts as pages are added. The ongoing pass, on its own page.
Questions about this.
What is an orphan page?
A page on your site that no other page links to. Google may not find it, and if it does it treats it as unimportant. Seasonal pages and old blog posts are the usual orphans on park sites.
Do footer links count as internal links?
They count, but weakly. A page linked only from the footer looks less important than one linked from the body of the homepage and related pages.
What should link text say?
What the destination is: "see the pull-through sites" or "cabin rates and availability." Not "click here" or "learn more," which tell Google nothing about the page being linked.
How many internal links should a page have?
Enough to connect it to its neighbors and to the booking page, with meaningful text. There is no target number; the aim is that every page is reachable in two clicks from the homepage and no page is reachable only from the footer.
Want this checked on your park site?
Send us the address. We run the full check and tell you what we found, in plain words. SEO for parks starts at $250 a month.
Part of the RV park SEO guide, section: What a script cannot see. Previous: Backlinks and citations: the authority that lives on other people's sites. Next: Keyword targeting: does the page say what guests search?.