What is one more internal link per post worth?
Problem
- Most visitors read one or two pages and leave, and every page they skip is an ad view and a chance to win them back that you never get.
- "Add more internal links" is standard advice, but nobody puts a number on what it is worth.
Solution
- Read your visits and page views off your WebCounter report - one divided by the other is your pages per visit.
- Put them into the free calculator below and it shows the extra page views and earnings from one more link on every post.
Key points
- If 3% of readers click one more link, pages per visit rise about 3% - from 1.60 to 1.65.
- On 5,000 visits a month that is about 250 more page views a month.
- In ad money it is small: about R20 a month at a $5 page RPM, roughly R700 over two years with 3% monthly growth.
- It scales with traffic - at 50,000 visits a month the same link is worth about R200 a month.
- The real payoff is readers who read a second post - they are the ones who come back and sign up.
In what bounce rate costs we priced the readers who leave after one page. This post asks what happens if you give every reader one more good reason to stay: a link on every post to another post worth reading - and what that is honestly worth.
How one link adds page views
Put one more link to another of your posts on every page. A share of readers follow it - and because the page they land on has a link too, a few go on again. Pages per visit go from p to p / (1 - click share).
- The click share is the unknown. There is no reliable published benchmark for one in-text link; the calculator's 3% is an estimate, so test your own.
- A relevant link beats a generic one. "Related posts" boxes at the bottom are read by few; a link in the paragraph where the question comes up is followed far more.
- Each extra page view earns at your page RPM: $5 per 1,000 page views is the midpoint for travel, food and home (Aditude, 23 July 2025).
- Ad money is the smallest part of it. A reader on a second page is more likely to return and to sign up - see what a returning visitor is worth.
Work out what one link is worth
Type your visits a month, your pages per visit, the share of readers you expect to click, your page RPM and your traffic growth. The calculator shows the new pages per visit, the extra page views and the extra earnings - with a chart of the months ahead.
Prefer a full page? Open the internal links calculator on CalcSA. For the other side of the same coin, the bounce rate calculator shows what readers who leave after one page cost you.
Worked example: the calculator's defaults
A site with 5,000 visits a month at 1.6 pages a visit, where 3% of readers click the new link, earning a $5 page RPM, with traffic growing 3% a month. Dollar earnings are converted at the European Central Bank reference rate the calculator stores (14 October 2026: $1 = R16.47).
- Pages per visit rise from 1.60 to 1.65 - 3.1% more page views.
- That is 247 more page views a month at today's traffic.
- They earn about R20 a month ($1.24).
- Over 24 months, with traffic growing, the link adds 8,518 page views and about R700.
Three more cases, same defaults except the one shown, over 24 months:
- 1% click: about R230 - a generic link nobody notices.
- 5% click: about R1,190 - a link placed where the reader's next question comes up.
- A bigger site, 50,000 visits a month: about R7,000 - the same link on ten times the readers.
Estimates. The 5,000 visits, 1.6 pages a visit, 3% click share, $5 page RPM and 3% growth are assumptions, as in the calculator. The live calculator uses the latest ECB rate, so its rand numbers may differ slightly from these.
Two years of extra earnings, by how many click
Same site, extra earnings added up month by month, at 1%, 3% and 5% of readers clicking:
- 1% click
- 3% click
- 5% click
Show the numbers as a table
| Month | 1% click | 3% click | 5% click |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | R21 | R63 | R107 |
| 6 | R43 | R132 | R224 |
| 12 | R94 | R289 | R492 |
| 18 | R156 | R477 | R812 |
| 24 | R229 | R701 | R1,194 |
- The click share matters more than anything else - 5% earns five times what 1% does.
- The lines curve up because traffic grows - the link works on every new reader too.
- It is one edit per post, done once, so even the small numbers pay for an afternoon's work.
Reading your counter for this
Your WebCounter counter gives you both halves of pages per visit, and shows whether the link works. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.
- Pages per visit is page views divided by unique visitors on your WebCounter report.
- Test the click share: note the visits to the page you link to, add the link, and compare the next 30 days.
- Link from your busiest pages first - the pages report shows which posts carry the readers.
- Watch pages per visit month on month: if it does not move after a round of links, the links are in the wrong place.
Sources
- Aditude, "RPM for Publishers" (23 July 2025) - $5 page RPM midpoint for travel, food and home. Not re-checked at the original on 18 October 2026; as cited in the CalcSA calculator.
- European Central Bank euro reference rates, 14 October 2026 (stored copy in the calculator) - $1 = R16.47.
- The 3% click share is our estimate - no published benchmark was found for the click rate of one in-text link.
- Calculator: CalcSA, Internal links: pages per visit.
Estimates only. How many readers follow a link depends on where it sits and how well it answers their next question; your own counter is the test.
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