Every link on your site is a vote.
You are voting for which pages matter, which topics relate to each other, and where Google should focus its attention. Most sites cast these votes randomly, linking wherever convenient rather than where strategic. The difference between accidental and intentional internal linking is often the difference between page 5 and page 1.
This is not about adding more links. It is about adding the right links from the right pages.
How Link Equity Actually Flows
Link equity flows through your site like water through pipes. External sites link to your homepage, and authority pools there. Your homepage links to category pages, and some of that authority flows down. Categories link to products, and the flow continues.
But the flow is not equal. Each pipe splits the water.
A page with 10 outbound links passes roughly one-tenth of its equity through each link. A page with 100 outbound links passes roughly one-hundredth through each. This is why mega-menus with 200 links dilute the value of every single link in them.
Distance matters too. A page directly linked from your homepage receives more equity than a page three clicks away, assuming similar link counts at each level. Every additional level of hierarchy means more splitting, more dilution.
Two principles emerge from this: link from strong pages to pages you want to strengthen, and do not dilute those links with excessive outbound links on the source page.
Think about where your authority pools. For most sites, that is the homepage and any pages with strong external backlinks. Those pages should link strategically to your priority targets, not scatter links randomly across dozens of destinations.
Which Pages Deserve More Links
Not all pages deserve equal internal linking attention. Prioritize based on business value and ranking potential.
Pages that should receive more internal links: money pages like product and service pages, pages targeting competitive keywords where you need ranking help, new content that has not been discovered yet, cornerstone content that defines your expertise.
For local service businesses, location pages deserve heavy linking. A Nashville, TN HVAC company should link to their Nashville service area page from every blog post about heating, cooling, or home comfort. That blog content accumulates authority over time. Internal links channel that authority to the page that actually converts visitors into customers.
Pages that should give more internal links: your homepage which holds the highest authority on most sites, category pages with accumulated authority, high-traffic blog posts, and any pages with strong external backlink profiles.
The strategy connects these two lists. Identify your strongest pages through backlink analysis. Ensure those pages link to your priority targets. If your most-linked blog post does not connect to your money pages, you are wasting accumulated authority.
Many sites discover during audits that their homepage links only to top-level categories, leaving product pages starved of direct homepage equity. Others find high-authority blog posts linking to nothing useful. Both are missed opportunities.
Contextual Links vs Navigation Links
This distinction matters more than most guides acknowledge.
Links embedded within content carry more weight than navigation links. Google understands that navigation links exist for user convenience across all pages. They are structural. Contextual links represent editorial choices about relevance. They are signals.
When a blog post about marathon training links to your running shoes page within a relevant sentence, that contextual link sends a strong signal of topical relationship. The same running shoes page linked from a header navigation carries less individual weight because that link appears on every page site-wide.
Does this mean you should abandon navigation links? No. Navigation ensures every page is reachable and provides baseline equity distribution. The strategy is layering. Navigation for structure. Contextual for emphasis.
Blog posts and articles offer the richest contextual linking opportunities. Each piece of content can naturally reference and link to relevant product pages, service pages, or other content. Your editorial guidelines should include internal linking requirements. Every post links to at least two or three relevant internal pages. This is not optional decoration. It is strategic equity distribution.
Anchor Text Strategy
Anchor text tells Google what the target page is about. Internal anchor text is a ranking signal, though weaker than external anchor text.
The spectrum runs from exact match (“running shoes”) to completely generic (“click here”). Neither extreme is ideal.
Exact match anchors work sparingly for key pages. But if every internal link to your running shoes page uses the anchor text “running shoes,” the pattern looks manipulative. Google has seen this trick before.
Partial match anchors are the primary approach. “Best running shoes for beginners” or “our running footwear collection” include relevant terms without forcing exact keywords.
Natural variation signals authenticity. The same target page might be linked as “running shoes,” “shoes for runners,” “our running footwear collection,” and “these popular trainers” across different source pages. This looks like genuine editorial linking, not optimization theater.
Generic anchors like “click here” or “read more” waste opportunities. Instead of “To learn more, click here,” write “Our guide to marathon training covers this in depth.” The second version provides context to both users and search engines.
Finding and Fixing Orphan Pages
Orphan pages have no internal links pointing to them. Google might never find them through crawling. Even if they appear in your sitemap, lack of internal links signals low importance.
Orphans happen more than you expect. Site redesigns break old links. Products get removed from navigation but not deleted. Campaign landing pages get created and forgotten. Pagination pages drift beyond what is directly linked.
Detection requires comparing what exists versus what is linked.
Crawl comparison: Run a full crawl of your site, then compare discovered URLs against your sitemap or CMS database. URLs in the database but not found by crawling are potential orphans.
Search Console analysis: The Pages report shows indexed pages. Cross-reference against your internal crawl. Pages indexed but not internally linked relied on external links or sitemaps alone. That is fragile.
Log file analysis: Pages never requested by Googlebot despite being live suggest discovery problems.
Fixing orphans requires adding internal links from relevant pages. Do not dump links randomly. Find contextually appropriate source pages. An orphaned product page should be linked from its category, from related products, and from any blog content discussing similar items.
Link Distribution Patterns
How you structure internal linking creates patterns Google can evaluate.
Silo structure groups related content and links primarily within groups. The camping category links heavily to camping products. The hiking category links to hiking products. Fewer cross-category links. This concentrates topical relevance within silos.
Hub and spoke creates central hub pages that link out to detailed pages. Spokes primarily link back to the hub. The hub accumulates authority from spokes’ external links and distributes it back through outbound links.
Flat distribution links everything to everything without hierarchy. This dilutes focus and makes it harder for any single page to accumulate concentrated relevance.
Most effective sites use hybrid approaches. Silo-like organization for main content types. Strategic cross-links between related silos. Hub pages for major topics.
The danger of strict silos: related content in different silos never connects. If hiking boots and camping boots are in separate silos with no cross-links, users and crawlers miss the relationship. Strategic cross-silo linking preserves topical structure while acknowledging real-world content relationships.
When Automation Helps and When It Hurts
Plugins and scripts can automate internal linking. Whether they should depends on the type of automation.
Automation works well for structural linking: related posts widgets using actual content analysis, breadcrumb generation, category and tag archive linking, “products in this category” sections. These create useful patterns that serve both users and search engines.
Automation fails for keyword-based auto-linking. The approach sounds efficient: automatically link “running shoes” to the running shoes page every time the phrase appears. In practice, this creates problems.
If “running shoes” appears 50 times across your blog, automatically linking each instance creates an unnatural pattern. The reading experience suffers from blue underlined text everywhere. The linking pattern screams automation to anyone paying attention, including search engines.
Manual contextual linking, guided by editorial standards, produces better results. Automation handles structural links. Humans handle in-content editorial links. This division works.
Auditing Your Internal Links
Regular audits catch problems before they compound.
Track internal links per page. Pages with fewer than three to five internal links deserve investigation. Truly orphaned pages need immediate attention.
Analyze link equity distribution. Tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs estimate internal PageRank. Are your priority pages receiving proportional internal authority? If your most important money page has fewer internal links than a random blog post, something is wrong.
Review anchor text distribution. Export all internal links with their anchor text. Look for over-optimization patterns with too many exact-match anchors to single pages. Look for wasted opportunities with too many generic anchors.
Fix broken internal links. Links to 404 pages waste equity and harm user experience.
Audit frequency depends on site size. Large sites with over 10,000 pages benefit from monthly automated crawls and quarterly deep audits. Medium sites between 500 and 10,000 pages need quarterly crawls and semi-annual deep audits. Small sites under 500 pages can manage with semi-annual crawls and annual deep audits.
After major site changes like redesigns, migrations, or large content additions, run immediate audits regardless of schedule.
Making It Practical
Before publishing new content: include three to five internal links to relevant existing content, ensure at least one link uses descriptive anchor text for your priority page, and add links from existing high-authority content back to new content.
Monthly maintenance: check for new orphan pages, review internal link counts on priority pages, fix any broken internal links.
Quarterly review: analyze anchor text distribution, evaluate link equity flow to money pages, identify high-authority pages not linking to priority targets, update old content with links to newer relevant content.
Internal linking is not a one-time setup. It is an ongoing practice that compounds over time. Sites that systematically build internal link networks outperform those relying on accidental link patterns. Every strategic link you add today continues working tomorrow.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Links Best Practices – https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable
- Google Search Central: How Google Interprets Links – https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-and-seo
- Google Search Console Help: Links Report – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9049606
- The Original PageRank Paper (Stanford) – http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf