Is there such a thing as cross-linking within one site?

Question

I'm wondering whether there is such a thing as cross-linking between two pages with internal links.

So I know that in terms of SEO, it's bad to link two pages back and forth from two separate websites as in:

Website A page 7   →   Website B page 3
Website B page 3   →   Website A page 7

This is called cross-linking.

What I'm wondering is whether cross-link exists within the same website:

Website A page 7   →   Website A page 13
Website A page 13  →   Website A page 7

Would those two links pretty much cancel each others like the two link between website A and B above?

Isn't the reason that cross-linking between sites is discouraged is because Google will think it is link-exchange and such paid links are against Google's webmaster guidelines? — Stephen Ostermiller, Mar 20, 2018 at 17:11
Well... it could be genuine and not a paid link... I'd say that it's hard to know whether it's paid or not. I suppose the quantity of such exchanges may be what Google looks at as well. — Alexis Wilke, Mar 20, 2018 at 17:19
Do what is natural for a webmaster to do and do not get carried away. Do not try and game the system and you should be okay. — closetnoc, Mar 20, 2018 at 17:44
If your having to think long and hard about it... its not natural, but Google or Bing does not punish for internal linking, why would they? — Simon Hayter, Mar 20, 2018 at 18:06
@SimonHayter there are many cases in which it happens naturally. Any two pages in your main navigation are going to cross link to each other. Henry listed a couple others in his answer. — Stephen Ostermiller, Mar 20, 2018 at 18:12

Henry Visotski · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-20 17:26:50Z

Your internal linking example is fine, for several reasons.

This is an internal linking scheme. As Stephen mentioned above, search engines don't want to see a tit for tat between different websites, but things are different within one site. Plus, internal links have a much lower impact on rankings than inbound links anyway.
There can be plenty of good reasons why a website would have such an internal linking scheme. Related content widgets are good examples. Different versions of pages, such as web vs print. Articles about entities with similar names, such as what you see on Wikipedia. Search engines are aware of this.
Even if you cross-link externally, you are not guaranteed a penalty. Mostly, search engines would take note if you have a lot of cross links, or if you gain several cross links at the same time. Occasionally, there may be good reason for a cross link, though rarely and with caution.

That was pretty much my reasoning. Especially, all pages have a link back to the home page and obviously, many internal links appear on the home page... — Alexis Wilke, Mar 20, 2018 at 18:40

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