Site architecture
Internal linking that lifts the page that sells.
The links between your own pages are the one ranking signal you control completely. They tell Google which pages matter and what each one is about. Most sites waste them on menus and footers. Placed deliberately, they point everything at the pages that take bookings.
What internal links do
Google finds pages by following links. Its own SEO starter guide says the vast majority of the new pages Google finds every day are found through links. The same guide says link text, the words you click, tells users and Google something about the page being linked to, so both can understand what a page contains before they visit it.
Three things follow from that. A page nothing links to is hard for Google to find and looks unimportant. A page many of your pages link to looks important. And the words used in those links help decide what Google thinks the page is about. Internal linking is the practice of arranging all three on purpose.
Why most sites get it wrong
The common pattern is links everywhere and meaning nowhere. A mega menu linking every page from every page. A footer with fifty links. A sidebar of recent posts. Blog posts that never link to anything, or that link to the homepage with the words click here. When everything links to everything, the links stop saying which pages matter.
The other common pattern is the orphan: a page that exists in the sitemap but is linked from nowhere inside the site. Town pages and old guides often end up this way. Google may still find them, but the site is telling Google it does not value them.
The rules I work to
Every page links up to its parent
Each supporting page links to the service or hub it belongs to, using words that describe that page. A town page links up to its service. A question page links up to the service it helps sell.
Parents link down where it helps the reader
A service page links to its most useful supporting pages, such as the price page, the checklist and the main towns, where a reader would genuinely want them.
Links sit inside the writing
A link in the middle of a relevant sentence carries more meaning than one in a list at the bottom. The surrounding words help explain what the linked page is about.
Link text says what the page is
End of tenancy cleaning in Stockport, not click here or read more. Descriptive, natural and varied, never stuffed with the same exact phrase every time.
Sideways links only for a reason
A page links across to another service only when a reader of this page would need that one. Neighbouring towns link to each other; unrelated services mostly do not.
No orphans
Every page that should be found is linked from at least one relevant page inside the site, not just listed in the sitemap.
What it looked like on a real site
For a Manchester cleaning firm, thirty three finished guides had been sitting on the site invisible, linked from almost nothing. They were wired into the services they belonged to: each guide linking up to its service with descriptive words, and each service page linking to its most useful guides. Sixteen town pages went in under two area hubs, each linking up to its service and across to its neighbours. Across June to August 2026 the firm averaged position 6 for "house cleaner manchester" in Search Console.
On a Las Vegas injury firm's site, every accident type page linked up to one practice hub, and each surrounding community hub linked down to its practice pages. By July 2026 the firm held 44 top-three rankings in the Ahrefs rank tracker, up from 9. Links were one part of both results, but they decided where the strength from everything else ended up.
How the work runs on an existing site
Crawl and count
A crawl of the whole site records every internal link: from where, to where, with what words. It shows which pages receive the most links and which receive none.
Compare with what should matter
The pages that earn money should be among the most linked-to. Usually they are not; the homepage, blog archives and old campaigns often are.
Find the orphans and the dead ends
Pages with no internal links in, and pages whose only links out are the menu. Both are fixed first.
Write the linking plan
For each page, its parent, the words to use, and the two or three pages it should link to in the body. Kept alongside the keyword map.
Place the links in the writing
Links added inside relevant sentences, with the surrounding text adjusted so they read naturally, not bolted on at the end.
Recrawl and check
A second crawl confirms every page is reachable and the money pages now receive the links they should.
A linking plan for one page, worked through
Take a town page for end of tenancy cleaning in Stockport. It links up once to the end of tenancy cleaning service page, inside a sentence about the work, with the words end of tenancy cleaning. It links across to the Salford and Trafford town pages where a sentence mentions the neighbouring areas, because a reader in Heaton Moor may just as easily be moving to Sale. It links to the checklist page where it mentions what landlords inspect.
In return, the service page links down to Stockport among its main towns, the neighbouring town pages link back across, and the Greater Manchester hub links to it. Five or six links in, three or four out, every one of them readable in a sentence. Multiply that across a site and the strength flows where it should without any page looking engineered.
Mistakes to avoid
The same exact words every time
Fifty links saying end of tenancy cleaning Manchester looks engineered. Natural variation reads better to people and to Google.
Links to redirected addresses
After a redesign or a merge, internal links often still point at old addresses that redirect. They work, but a direct link is cleaner and faster.
Hiding links from people
Links in tiny text, in the same colour as the page, or only visible to crawlers. Links are for readers first.
Nofollow on your own links
Marking links between your own pages as nofollow throws away the signal you are trying to send. Keep them normal.
Menus and footers still matter
None of this means the navigation is unimportant. The menu should lead to the main services and hubs, the pages a visitor most needs. The footer can carry the essentials, such as contact details and the main service links. What changes is that the menu stops trying to be the whole linking strategy. The detailed work happens inside the pages, where the links carry meaning.
A simple check helps: if you removed the menu and footer entirely, could a reader still get from any page to the service it belongs to by following links in the writing? If the answer is no, the linking lives in the wrong place and the pages themselves need work.
What you receive
The crawl before and after, the list of orphaned pages and how each was fixed, the linking plan for every page on the map, and the links placed in the content itself. All of it kept in your portal next to the keyword map, so anyone writing a new page knows exactly where it should link and from where it should be linked.
New pages published later are added to the plan before they go live, never after.
Questions about internal linking
How many internal links should a page have
There is no magic number. Enough that the page links to its parent and the few pages a reader would genuinely want next. Dozens of links in one page usually means none of them means much.
Does link text really matter
Yes. Google's own starter guide says link text tells people and Google something about the page being linked to. Descriptive words help; click here tells nobody anything.
Should blog posts link to service pages
Yes, when the post supports that service. That link is how the article's strength reaches the page that takes the booking.
Can internal linking alone improve rankings
It can help noticeably, especially on sites with orphaned or buried money pages. It works best alongside good pages and a clear structure.
How often should links be reviewed
Whenever pages are added, merged or moved, and with a full crawl a few times a year to catch orphans and old addresses.
Want to see where your links point?
Send me the site. I will show you which pages receive your site's strength and which pages should.