Site architecture
Internal linking
Internal linking is the pattern of links between a site’s own pages.
What is internal linking?
Internal linking is the pattern of links between a site’s own pages. It distributes authority, communicates what pages are about through anchor text, and determines how deeply a page sits in the structure.
Why it comes up
It is the only link signal entirely under a publisher’s control, and on large sites it is the main determinant of which pages get attention.
In practice
Built with descriptive anchors in content rather than in navigation alone, with hub pages connecting clusters and sibling links between related pages, and orphan detection running automatically.
What it is not
Linking everything to everything distributes authority evenly, which means it distributes it to nothing in particular. The pattern needs a hierarchy.
Worth knowing because it comes up in almost every conversation about this.
Where this comes up in the work
It is part of Brand and Creative, and more specifically of Creative for paid social. Across the rest of the work it shows up in:
- AI Automation and Workflows, in which it shows up as making the automation log enough that a failure is diagnosable
- AI Platform Optimization, which cannot be done properly without it
- Agentic Commerce, where it quietly limits how far naming the products the way an agent asks for them can go
- App Store Optimization: it is the reason exposing the core actions through App Intents so the system can see them is scoped the way it is
What to check
Two questions that establish whether this is actually in order on a given site:
- Whether anybody has measured it, or whether it is being taken on trust
- Whether the person who set it up is still the person who understands it
More in site architecture
Common questions
What tells you whether internal linking is in order?
Built with descriptive anchors in content rather than in navigation alone, with hub pages connecting clusters and sibling links between related pages, and orphan detection running automatically. The check is cheap; the fix is where the work sits.
Who owns internal linking in a business?
Whoever is accountable for feeding margin into the bidding instead of revenue. Problems with this tend to persist because nobody is.
How much work is internal linking?
Less than people expect to check and sometimes more than they expect to fix. Built with descriptive anchors in content rather than in navigation alone, with hub pages connecting clusters and sibling links between related pages, and orphan detection running automatically. There is a fuller account in Citations and NAP consistency. Business Profile management is the part that tends to get skipped.
Should internal linking come before other work?
High if it is actually broken, low if it is merely imperfect. The check tells you which.
How do you prove internal linking is worth fixing?
It is the only link signal entirely under a publisher’s control, and on large sites it is the main determinant of which pages get attention. The evidence is specific to the site, which is why the check comes before the recommendation. For the mechanics, Melbourne. For what it costs to get wrong, Mumbai.
Is internal linking just another name for something?
Linking everything to everything distributes authority evenly, which means it distributes it to nothing in particular. The pattern needs a hierarchy. For the mechanics, Nonprofit and NGO. For what it costs to get wrong, Real estate and property.
Ask us the question you cannot get answered
We will tell you if the answer is that you do not need us yet. That happens often enough to be worth saying out loud.