A practical checklist for internal linking

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. Run through this the next time internal linking comes up.

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

The checklist

• Internal links spread authority to the pages that need it
• Descriptive anchor text beats "click here" every time
• Orphan pages rarely rank at all
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

What it costs to ignore

Internal links spread authority to the pages that need it. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

The short version

Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Three things worth confirming about internal linking before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Orphan pages rarely rank at all — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.