How do you decide which pages actually get your internal links?

[MadOnGrind]

Something I got wrong for a long time, and I still see it in most internal linking threads here: the conversation is nearly always about how many links per article. Three to five, keep it natural, don't stuff. Reasonable advice, but it never told me which pages should be on the receiving end.

What changed it for me was inheriting a site with a pile of orphan pages. Decent articles, nothing pointing at them. I'd always assumed the crawl budget talk was overblown, so I ignored that and went hunting for content problems instead. Rewrote a few of them. Nothing moved.

Then I linked them properly from pages that already had some standing. They started getting picked up. Nothing else about those pages changed.

So now I work backwards, and it doesn't take long:

• List the pages that actually matter. The ones that earn something. Usually a much shorter list than I expect.
• Check what points at each of those internally. Not the whole site, just those. Anything sitting on zero is the first job.
• Find the pages that already have some standing and see whether a link from them makes sense for a reader. If it doesn't read naturally, skip it. A forced link is worse than no link.
• Then worry about the count per article. It falls out of the steps above instead of being decided up front.

The part I'm still unsure about is how far to push it. At some point you're linking to the same handful of pages from everywhere, and it starts to look engineered, both to a reader and probably to Google.

So how do you decide which pages get the links? Do you work from a fixed list of targets, or link naturally as you write and fix the gaps afterwards? And has anyone hit a point where consolidating too hard actually backfired?

 

[RotatingProxy]

Something I got wrong for a long time, and I still see it in most internal linking threads here: the conversation is nearly always about how many links per article. Three to five, keep it natural, don't stuff. Reasonable advice, but it never told me which pages should be on the receiving end.

What changed it for me was inheriting a site with a pile of orphan pages. Decent articles, nothing pointing at them. I'd always assumed the crawl budget talk was overblown, so I ignored that and went hunting for content problems instead. Rewrote a few of them. Nothing moved.

Then I linked them properly from pages that already had some standing. They started getting picked up. Nothing else about those pages changed.

So now I work backwards, and it doesn't take long:

• List the pages that actually matter. The ones that earn something. Usually a much shorter list than I expect.
• Check what points at each of those internally. Not the whole site, just those. Anything sitting on zero is the first job.
• Find the pages that already have some standing and see whether a link from them makes sense for a reader. If it doesn't read naturally, skip it. A forced link is worse than no link.
• Then worry about the count per article. It falls out of the steps above instead of being decided up front.

The part I'm still unsure about is how far to push it. At some point you're linking to the same handful of pages from everywhere, and it starts to look engineered, both to a reader and probably to Google.

So how do you decide which pages get the links? Do you work from a fixed list of targets, or link naturally as you write and fix the gaps afterwards? And has anyone hit a point where consolidating too hard actually backfired?

A useful way to choose internal link targets is to prioritize the pages that make other pages more complete, because those naturally become reference points instead of destinations that need constant promotion

 

[MadOnGrind]

prioritize the pages that make other pages more complete

That framing works nicely for the informational side. The guides other posts keep needing basically pick themselves, and they hold their standing without much upkeep. Where it breaks down for me is the pages that earn something. A service page or a comparison piece is never going to be a natural reference point, no other article needs it to feel complete, but it is still the page the whole exercise exists to support. Those stay on my deliberate list and I go looking for honest angles into them. Do you treat those differently, or just accept they will carry fewer internal links?

 

[Roger Marquez]

If you decide a page needs to be published and indexed by default it "deserves" internal links (both ways)

 

[Thompson_%]

Something I got wrong for a long time, and I still see it in most internal linking threads here: the conversation is nearly always about how many links per article. Three to five, keep it natural, don't stuff. Reasonable advice, but it never told me which pages should be on the receiving end.

What changed it for me was inheriting a site with a pile of orphan pages. Decent articles, nothing pointing at them. I'd always assumed the crawl budget talk was overblown, so I ignored that and went hunting for content problems instead. Rewrote a few of them. Nothing moved.

Then I linked them properly from pages that already had some standing. They started getting picked up. Nothing else about those pages changed.

So now I work backwards, and it doesn't take long:

• List the pages that actually matter. The ones that earn something. Usually a much shorter list than I expect.
• Check what points at each of those internally. Not the whole site, just those. Anything sitting on zero is the first job.
• Find the pages that already have some standing and see whether a link from them makes sense for a reader. If it doesn't read naturally, skip it. A forced link is worse than no link.
• Then worry about the count per article. It falls out of the steps above instead of being decided up front.

The part I'm still unsure about is how far to push it. At some point you're linking to the same handful of pages from everywhere, and it starts to look engineered, both to a reader and probably to Google.

So how do you decide which pages get the links? Do you work from a fixed list of targets, or link naturally as you write and fix the gaps afterwards? And has anyone hit a point where consolidating too hard actually backfired?

And expert who has handle something related will review it and tell you the process

 

[moveOn1]

I usually prioritize pages that drive conversions or target important keywords then add internal links only where they genuinely fit the context regular audits help find orphan pages and i avoid forcing links just to boost a page it keeps the structure natural

 

[MadOnGrind]

If you decide a page needs to be published and indexed by default it "deserves" internal links (both ways)

@Roger Marquez I like that as a floor. If a page earned its place in the index it shouldn't be sitting at zero. And the inverse turns out to be quietly useful too... every time I can't find one natural spot to link a page from, the page usually didn't have a job in the first place. It's become an accidental pruning test.

Where I hesitate is reading "deserves" as the same amount for everything. Most sites carry pages that are worth keeping but not worth pushing (older seasonal pieces, the small how-tos). Give them all links both ways on principle and you're back to spreading evenly, just with a nicer justification. So everything gets the floor, and the real effort goes behind the few pages the site is actually there for.

The both ways part is what I'm curious about in practice. Do your strongest pages link out to everything they mention, or does that stay selective as well?