Why internal linking matters more than it looks

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Internal linking is easy to treat as a detail, and that is exactly why it is worth a few minutes of attention.

Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

Why it matters

Internal links spread authority to the pages that need it. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

Descriptive anchor text beats "click here" every time. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The mistakes we see most

Orphan pages rarely rank at all. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

In practice

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. 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 you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.