Handbook/Ch. 7
Handbook · Chapter 7

Site Architecture, Internal Linking & International

Google crawls a link only if it is an anchor with a real resolving href. Flat hierarchy, descriptive anchor text, URL design, faceted-navigation crawl control, and the three non-negotiable hreflang rules for international sites.

Internal & external linking

Google crawls a link only if it's an <a> with an href resolving to a real address. Nothing else counts.

<a href="/products/category/shoes">Shoes</a>        <!-- crawlable -->
<a routerLink="products/category">Shoes</a>          <!-- NOT crawlable: no href -->
<span href="...">Shoes</span>                        <!-- NOT: not an <a> -->
<a onclick="goto('...')">Shoes</a>                   <!-- NOT: URL only in JS -->
<a href="javascript:goTo('products')">Shoes</a>      <!-- NOT: doesn't resolve -->

Anchor text: descriptive and natural; never generic ("click here", "read more") or keyword-stuffed (spam violation); don't chain adjacent links; image-only links carry context in alt. rel values: nofollow (don't endorse), sponsored (paid/ad/affiliate), ugc (user-generated) — combine as needed (rel="ugc nofollow"). Paid links are acceptable only when qualified.

Architecture: flat logical hierarchy — important pages within a few clicks of home; every important page has ≥1 crawlable internal link; descriptive anchor text; breadcrumbs reinforce hierarchy.

URL design — DO: descriptive words not IDs; hyphens as separators; lowercase; localized words; percent-encode/UTF-8 non-ASCII; standard ?key=value syntax. DON'T: underscores; jammed words; session IDs / click-tracking params in indexable URLs; URL fragments (#/x) to change content (Google ignores fragments).

International (multi-regional & multilingual)

URL structure options: ccTLD (example.de — strongest geo signal, expensive) > subdomain (de.example.com) > subdirectory (example.com/de/ — low maintenance) > URL parameters (?loc=de — not recommended).

Geotargeting signals (priority): ccTLD → hreflang → server IP → on-page locale cues (address/phone/currency/language) → local links → Google Business Profile. Google ignores geotargeting meta tags. DON'T auto-redirect/swap content by IP — Googlebot crawls mostly from the USA and may never see regional variants; use distinct URLs + hreflang + a user-selectable switcher.

hreflang — three non-negotiable rules: (1) bidirectional return tags — if X points to Y, Y must point back; (2) self-referential — every version lists itself + all others; (3) fully-qualified absolute URLs. Codes: language = ISO 639-1 (en, de), optional region = ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 (GB, US). Valid: de, en-GB, de-CH, zh-Hant. Invalid: region alone (GB), non-standard (es-419, EU, UK). x-default = fallback.

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://en-gb.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de"    href="https://de.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.example.com/" />

Methods: HTML <link>, HTTP header (for PDFs), or XML sitemap (xhtml:link, declare xmlns:xhtml). Common mistakes: missing return links, region-only codes, relative URLs, pointing at non-canonical URLs. ⚠️ Malformed HTML can silently break hreflang — validate markup.

Titles & meta descriptions

Title link sources (priority): <title> → main visual title → <h1> → og:title → prominent text → body → anchor text → WebSite structured data. Google rewrites titles that are half-empty, obsolete-dated, mismatched, boilerplate, or language-mismatched. <title> best practices: one per page in <head>, descriptive, concise, unique, brand concisely, match page language. Meta descriptions: no hard character limit (truncated per device); unique, specific, human-readable; Google often auto-generates the snippet but uses yours when it better summarizes. Bing weights precise Title/Description more heavily than Google.

Sources

  1. Google Search Central — Make your links crawlable
  2. Google Search Central — Tell Google about localized versions (hreflang)
  3. Google Search Central — Managing faceted navigation
  4. Google Search Central — Influencing your title links in search results
Related
Internal Linking for SEO: Structure & Anchors Site Architecture & Crawl Depth: The 3-Click Rule Orphan Pages: How to Find & Fix Unlinked Pages Hreflang and International SEO: A Practical Guide Faceted Navigation & Crawl Traps: Stop URL Bloat URL Parameters & SEO: Tracking, Sort, Filter IDs Pagination SEO: rel=next/prev & Infinite Scroll links.orphan links.redirect_target links.to_noindex

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