Internal links are the cheapest SEO you have

Internal links are the only part of SEO that is entirely within your control, costs nothing, and takes effect as soon as the page is crawled again. They are also the part most people never deliberately touch.

What they actually do

• They get pages found. A page nothing links to is reachable only through a sitemap, and that is the weakest possible signal that it matters.
• They pass importance around. A page that other sites link to has standing, and some of that flows along the links it points at.
• They say what a page is about. The words in the link are a description of the destination, written by you, repeated across your site.

The third one is the most underrated. If six pages on your site link to one page with the words that describe it, you have told a very clear story about what that page covers.

Where the links should go

From pages that have standing, to pages that need it. Your home page and your few most linked-to pages are your strongest; the pages you just published are your weakest. Linking from the first to the second is free and it works.

The reverse habit is the common one: new pages link up to the home page, which needs no help, and nothing links down. That is why so many sites have a strong front page and an archive nobody reaches.

What to do when you publish something

A routine worth making automatic, because it takes ten minutes and is the difference between a page that is found and one that is not.

1. 01Search your own site for the new page's subject with the site: prefix. The results are the pages that already mention it.
2. 02Pick the three most relevant and add a link from each, inside the body text where the subject comes up, not in a list at the bottom.
3. 03Use words that describe the destination, and vary them between the three.
4. 04From the new page, link out to two or three existing pages a reader would want next. This is for the reader first and the crawler second.

A link inside a sentence that a person would actually follow is worth more than a row of related posts under the footer, which most readers and some crawlers treat as furniture.

Anchor text

• Describe the destination. "How to price your first offer" tells a reader and a crawler what they will get. "Click here" and "read more" tell neither.
• Vary it naturally. The same exact phrase every single time looks engineered, and you lose the chance to describe the page in several useful ways.
• Do not stuff it. A link whose words were chosen for a search engine rather than a reader is obvious, and it reads badly.

Finding orphan pages without a tool

An orphan is a page with no internal links pointing at it. Most sites have more than they expect, usually old posts and pages created outside the normal flow.

1. 01List every page on the site. Your sitemap is the quickest source.
2. 02List every page reachable by clicking from the home page, going three clicks deep.
3. 03The difference between the two lists is your orphans, and the list is usually shorter than feared and more surprising than expected.
4. 04For each one, decide: link to it from somewhere relevant, merge it into a page that deserves to exist, or remove it. Doing nothing is the only wrong answer.

Structure

Keep the site shallow. Any page a reader might want should be reachable from the home page in two or three clicks. Deep burial is both a crawling problem and a sign that the page was never really part of the plan.

Group related pages and link them to each other. A set of pages that all cover one subject and all reference each other is a clearer signal of coverage than the same pages scattered and unlinked.

The pattern that makes this concrete: one page covering the subject broadly, linking out to each of the specific pages, and every specific page linking back to it. The broad page accumulates the links other sites give you; the specific pages catch the specific searches. Neither works nearly as well alone.