Internal Linking: Send Your Strength Where It Earns

The Honest Version: This Is Not About Link Counts

More links is not the goal

Plugins that insert links wherever a keyword appears make this worse. You end up with dozens of pointless links that dilute the ones that matter and read badly to humans.

What actually matters

Where your strength ends up. Every page passes some value through its links. On most sites that value pools on the homepage and the newest blog post, and never reaches the pages that make money.

The test I use

Pick your most important commercial page. Count how many of your own pages link to it in the body content, not the menu. On a lot of sites the answer is one or zero, while a blog post from 2019 has forty.

That is the problem, and it is fixable in an afternoon.

What the Fix Involves

1. Map what links to what

Body content only. Menu and footer links appear on every page and tell you nothing about which pages you actually consider important.

2. Find the orphans that matter

Not every orphan needs rescuing. A thin old post can stay orphaned. A substantial page with no links is a wasted asset.

3. Point strength at the pages that earn

Your strongest pages should link to your commercial pages, in context, with anchor text that reads naturally in the sentence.

4. Fix links that travel through redirects

Every internal link should reach a live page in one step.

A Real Example

On this site, forty published pages had no contextual links pointing at them at all.

Among them was a two thousand word guide about ranking a Google Business Profile. A complete guide, on topic, with nothing linking to it from anywhere in the site’s content.

Nine of the substantial ones were linked from genuinely related pages, chosen so the link made sense in the sentence rather than being bolted on. The banking articles now link to the banks guide at the exact point a reader would want it.

The rest were left orphaned on purpose, because they were thin legacy posts that did not deserve the support.

When You Do Not Need This

You have fewer than twenty pages. Link them sensibly yourself. There is not enough structure for this to matter yet.

Your money pages already get links. If your commercial pages are well linked from your content, the main win is already taken.

Nothing ranks at all. Internal links redistribute strength. If there is none yet, there is nothing to move.

What You Can Check Yourself First

Three checks that need nothing but your own site and Search Console.

1. Run the money page test

Pick the page you most want customers to reach. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com “page title” to find pages mentioning it, or simply use your site search.

Then count how many of your own pages link to it inside the body content. Menu and footer links do not count, because they appear everywhere and tell Google nothing about importance.

If the answer is zero or one, you have found your problem.

2. Check what your homepage links to

Your homepage usually holds the most strength. Look at what it passes that on to. On most sites it links to recent blog posts and almost never to the pages that make money.

3. Look for pages Google has never indexed

In Search Console, the Pages report lists URLs that were discovered but not indexed. Cross-reference those against pages nothing links to. The overlap is usually striking, and it is not a coincidence.

How Many Links Is the Right Number

People want a rule here and there is not one, but there are principles that hold up.

Links should be earned by relevance, not quota

Every link should exist because a reader at that point in the sentence would genuinely want it. Pages written to hit a link count read exactly like pages written to hit a link count.

Depth matters more than volume

A page three clicks from the homepage is treated very differently from one buried nine clicks deep. Getting your important pages closer to the surface is often worth more than adding links to them.

The same link twice does nothing extra

Linking to the same page four times from one article does not multiply anything. Google generally counts the first one. Spread them across different pages instead.