Internal Linking for Ghost: The Complete Guide (2026)

Many bloggers overlook one of the most important SEO levers: internal linking. Using internal linking, you can improve your website's crawlability, help search engines find and rank your posts, spread link equity, and reduce orphan posts.

Internal linking is usually skipped because it's manual, time-consuming, and hard to track. The more your content grows, the harder it is to:

• Keep track of all the links and the anchor text.
• Remember what posts could be related to each other
• Create orphan posts: posts that are not linked to from other posts.
• Have broken internal links: links pointing to non-existent pages.
• Have poor anchor text: anchor text that is not descriptive or contextually relevant.

As a blogger using Ghost, these problems are frustrating due to the lack of tools tailored to this purpose. This guide is for solo bloggers, founders, and content teams who want to fix that.

In this post, we will cover the following topics:

• Why internal linking is critical for Ghost SEO.
• How Ghost handles internal links today.
• Common internal linking problems on Ghost.
• Internal linking best practices for Ghost.
• Internal linking checklist for Ghost.

What Are Internal Links?

An internal link is a link that points to a page on the same website. It is different from an external link, which points to a page on a different website.

Internal links are essential for SEO because they help search engines understand your website's structure and the relationships between your pages. They also allow readers move between related posts.

On Ghost, internal linking is especially important because your website is not just a blog; content can be a post or a page, enabling various use cases, such as product, category, case study, and more.

Having a consistent internal linking structure among these posts and pages is essential.

Why Internal Linking Is Critical for Ghost SEO

Building a strong internal linking structure helps with:

• Crawlability: Search engines can more easily crawl your website and understand the structure of your website when your pages are linked to each other. Crawlers discover pages by following links, so pages with no internal links are harder to discover, and if they aren't discovered, they won't be indexed.
• Indexation: It is the next step after crawlability. If search engines can't find your pages, they can't index them, and thus they can't rank them in search results.
• Link equity distribution: Internal links determine how authority flows between pages. A strong page can pass some of that value to the pages it links to. The search engine will consider that the linked page matters.

• User navigation & engagement: Readers can more easily move between related posts and find the information they are looking for. This also leads to more engagement and time on site. Users are more likely to read more posts and stay on your website for longer.

Ghost does not automatically link related posts on all pages, and even when it does, it cannot guarantee that all the posts will be linked. This is why it is essential to manually link related posts yourself.

How Ghost Handles Internal Links Today

Ghost provides three ways to build internal links:

Related posts

When you write a post, you don't define related posts; however, when users read the post, they can see a list of related posts at the bottom. This is a great way to build internal links without much effort.

However, you have no control over the posts that are displayed. Either Ghost or the theme you are using chooses which related posts to show.

Manual linking

You can manually link posts to each other from the post editor in the Ghost admin panel. Here are the steps:

• Select a text you want to use as the anchor of the link.
• A toolbar appears with an "Insert link" icon; click it.
• A modal appears with a search field to find the post you want to link to.
• Type a keyword that exists in the title of the post you wish to link.
• Look at the results and click on the desired post to apply the link.

This is a great user experience; however, it is manual and time-consuming, especially when you have many posts.

Tag pages

Ghost automatically generates pages for each tag you add to your posts. The page will list all posts with that tag. This is a great way to build internal links without much effort.

Common Internal Linking Problems on Ghost

Internal linking issues can be present without you noticing them because only an internal link analysis can reveal them. Here are the most common:

• Orphan posts: these are posts with no incoming links. They are isolated from the rest of the content and are harder for search engines to discover.
• Broken internal links: these are links that point to non-existent pages. They point to URLs that no longer exist, so those targets can't be indexed by search engines, and even worse, they hurt user trust and can waste crawl budget.
• Poor anchor text: it is a generic word or phrase like "click here", "read more ", "this article", or "here" that is not descriptive or contextually relevant. They are not helpful for users and search engines.
• Overlinked pages: these are pages with too many internal links. Pages like that look spammy, dilute link value, and negatively affect the user experience.
• Flat content structure: This occurs when most pages link to the same few posts, resulting in link equity not being evenly distributed across all pages.

These issues are not easy to fix manually and require a systematic approach.

Internal Linking Best Practices for Ghost

Adding internal links to your posts is great, but doing it the right way is even better. The following best practices apply to any site; on Ghost, you implement them in the editor and via tags/related posts.

Control the number of links per post

A good rule of thumb is to have a handful of links per post. But depending on the size of your blog, the length of the post, and the number of posts you have, you should adjust this number.

The table below shows the ideal number of links per post based on your blog's size.

Write good anchor text

Beyond the number of links, you should also pay attention to the anchor text. Anchor text is the text visible to the user that links to a web page. If the user clicks on the anchor text, it redirects to another web page.

It is essential to use descriptive and contextually relevant anchor text. Generic anchor text like "click here", "read more", "this article", "here", etc, is not helpful for users and search engines.

Here are examples of good anchor text: "Learn how to improve your SEO strategy", "How to use Blogima internal link checker", "The best practices for SEO", "Blogging for beginners".

Things to avoid when writing anchor text:

• Avoid using the same anchor text repeatedly.
• Avoid matching the exact title or slug.
• Avoid using keyword-stuffed anchor text.

Overoptimized anchor text is not helpful for users and search engines. It is also a sign of spammy behavior and may be discounted by search engines.

Place links in the right place

The best place for most links is in the body of the post, where they are relevant, but you can also place them in the intro or footer.

Placing a link early helps crawlers discover the page faster and index it sooner. Add at least one early. From time to time, verify the link freshness and the anchor text relevance.

Use the Bookmark component in Ghost to add links to your post. This component displays a link clearly, with key context for the linked post. It is great to use between two sections of the post.

How to Find Internal Linking Opportunities on Ghost

Without a tool, finding opportunities means auditing your content yourself. Here are two methods.

Manual method

This is the natural way to find opportunities. You go through your blog posts and pick one you want to find opportunities in, read the post, and for some keywords, you think about other posts on your blog that could be relevant. Doing it this way helps you better understand your content.

Spreadsheet approach

A more systematic approach is to use a spreadsheet:

• Create one row per post (you can start from a Ghost export or a list of URLs).
• Add columns for:
  • Post URL
  • Post Title: So you know which post the row represents.
• One column per keyword or topic you care about for internal linking (e.g., "internal linking," "SEO," "Ghost").
• For each post row, fill a keyword column with the URL or title of the post you want to link to when that keyword comes up in that post. So: "In this post, when I mention this topic, I'll link to this destination."

You end up with a grid: posts as rows, keywords as columns, and each cell = "link from this post to this post for this topic."

Limitations of manual audits

As you can see, finding opportunities manually is not easy, and the more your content grows, the harder it gets. Here are the limitations of the manual and spreadsheet approaches:

• It is hard to keep track of all the links and the anchor text.
• It is hard to remember which posts could be related to each other.
• Orphan posts may exist if you forget to do this process on a post.
• If not done regularly, you may have broken internal links or poor anchor text.
• It creates context switching between writing in the Ghost editor and auditing.
• It is time-consuming.
• It is hard to automate.

Automating Internal Linking on Ghost

Given the difficulty of consistent manual audits, automating the process wherever possible is a good idea. However, it is essential to distinguish between what can be automated and what should stay manual.

Here are tasks that should be automated:

• Finding linking opportunities in your content.
• Keeping track of the internal links and the anchor text.
• Remembering what posts could be related to each other.
• Detecting orphan posts, broken internal links, and poor anchor text.
• Detecting content that has not been updated in a while.

Here are tasks that should stay manual:

• Writing or reviewing the anchor text and deciding whether a suggestion is relevant.
• Placing the links in the right place in the post.
• Deciding which suggested links to add and whether each suggestion is relevant.

Using a tool carries risks you should avoid, such as blindly accepting or rejecting all suggestions or letting the tool do all the work.

Basically, a good internal linking tool surfaces opportunities and leaves the decisions to you. It should complement your manual work, not replace it.

How Blogima Solves Internal Linking on Ghost

When it comes to internal linking, Ghost lacks features such as orphan post detection, internal link suggestions, and an internal linking audit.

Blogima is a browser extension for Ghost that improves your internal link-building process.

• Orphan post detection: Blogima finds posts with no incoming internal links. From a dashboard, you can see a list of orphan posts and view recommendations to fix them.
• Keyword-to-post mapping: You can define a keyword you want to link to a post. When you write a post, if you mention the keyword, Blogima will suggest the post to link to; you just have to click on the suggestion to add the link.
• Smart internal link suggestions: In the Ghost editor, when you select a text, Blogima will suggest posts relevant to the selected text, based on the semantic similarity of the text and the post title.
• One-click fixes: Blogima finds linking opportunities and lists them for you to review and add with a single click.
• No context switching: Blogima adds a side panel to the Ghost editor so you can manage internal links without leaving the editor.
• Internal linking audit: Blogima audits your internal linking structure and provides a report with suggestions to improve it. After the audit, it assigns an internal link health score (0-100) to your blog. The more issues you fix, the higher the score.

We wrote a step-by-step guide on how install Blogima and fix your first internal link.

Internal Linking Checklist for Ghost

Use this checklist when publishing or auditing posts on Ghost.

Before publishing (each post)

• At least one internal link in the introduction.
• Place most links in the body, where they are the most relevant.
• Anchor text is descriptive, not generic ("click here," "read more").
• Link count should be within a sensible range for your blog size (avoid underlinking and overlinking).

When fixing existing content

• Use Blogima to run an internal linking audit to find orphans, broken links, and poor anchor text.
• Fix orphan posts: add at least one internal link to each from another post.
• Fix or remove broken internal links.
• Replace generic anchor text with descriptive, relevant text.

Ongoing

• Re-run the audit periodically so new orphans, poor anchor texts, and broken links don't pile up.
• Use Blogima to review suggestions before adding, and keep the final say on placement and anchor text.

Conclusion

Internal linking is one of the most effective SEO levers for Ghost sites, but Ghost doesn't show you orphans, suggest links, or give you a link-level overview.

You can work manually or with a spreadsheet, but as your content grows, that gets harder to sustain. Automation can handle the audit and suggestions; you keep control over which links to add and how they're phrased.

Use the checklist above when publishing or auditing posts. If you want to see exactly which posts need links and get suggestions inside the Ghost editor, try Blogima.