Internal linking strategy. The cheapest ranking lift you are not using.

What internal linking actually is

Internal linking is the practice of pointing hyperlinks from one page on your site to another page on the same site. That is the whole definition. The HTML is identical to any other hyperlink:

<a href="/services/seo">our SEO service</a>

What makes internal links special is that they do two things at once. They guide a human reader from one page to a related one. And they guide Google's crawler through the topical structure of your site. Both audiences walk the same path. The link is the only piece of on-page work that serves them equally.

Internal links are also entirely under your control. You do not need permission from another site, you do not have to wait for someone to link to you, you do not have to outreach. You decide which pages link to which, which anchor text to use, and how dense the network should be. The whole system is yours to build.

Why it works (the authority-flow model)

Google's original ranking algorithm, PageRank, was built around a simple idea: links pass authority. A page with many links pointing at it is probably important. A page with no links pointing at it is probably not.

The modern algorithm is more sophisticated than 1998 PageRank, but the core principle has not changed. When page A links to page B, some of A's authority flows to B. The link is a vote of confidence. Internal links are votes you cast yourself, and Google counts them, weighted by where on the site they come from and what anchor text they use.

Three concrete consequences:

1. Pages linked from your homepage rank better than pages buried five clicks deep. The homepage tends to have the most external links pointing at it, so its authority is high, and what it links to inherits a share of that.
2. Pages with descriptive anchor text rank for the words inside that anchor. If 20 pages on your site link to /services/seo using the anchor "SEO services Perth", Google takes that as a strong topical signal.
3. Pages with no internal links pointing in rarely rank for anything. Without internal votes, Google treats them as low-priority. Organic search traffic to orphaned pages is consistently the lowest in any audit we run.

This is why we say internal linking is the cheapest lift in SEO. You are not creating new content. You are not asking other sites to vouch for you. You are redistributing the authority that already exists across your own site, into the pages that need it most.

Hub-and-spoke: the structure every site needs

The pattern we use on every client site is hub-and-spoke. A pillar page sits at the centre of a topic. Around it sit cluster pages, each covering one specific sub-topic. Every cluster links up to the pillar; the pillar links down to every cluster; clusters link sideways to each other where the topics overlap.

The model looks like this:

                  [Pillar page]
                 /     |    |    \
       [Cluster 1]  [C2]  [C3]  [Cluster 4]
              \      /     \      /
               (lateral links between siblings)

For example, on this site, On-Page SEO is a pillar. Title tags, meta descriptions, header tags and this article are all clusters. Each cluster links back up to the pillar. The pillar lists all the clusters. Clusters link sideways to each other when the topics genuinely overlap (this one links to title tags and header tags because internal linking, anchors and headings all intersect).

Why this works: every cluster benefits from authority that flows down through the pillar. The pillar benefits from the topical authority that bubbles up from the clusters. Lateral links bind the cluster set together as a topic cluster Google recognises. The whole hub becomes an authoritative voice on the topic, rather than ten disconnected articles.

Hub-and-spoke for service sites

The same pattern works for service businesses without a blog. The service overview page is the pillar. Individual service pages are clusters. Location pages link sideways to service pages and the local-SEO hub. The structure looks like:

[Services overview]
   |
   |---> [Service A] <---> [Location 1] (where A is offered)
   |---> [Service B] <---> [Location 2]
   |---> [Service C] <---> [Case study]

Every service links to every location it operates in. Every location links to every service available there. Case studies link to the service they demonstrate. That is a service business's hub-and-spoke, no blog required.

The four internal link types

Not every internal link does the same job. We categorise them four ways and check that every cluster page has at least one of each.

1. Upward links. A cluster links up to its pillar. This is the spine. Every cluster on a site should link to its pillar at least once, preferably inside the body copy with descriptive anchor text. (Example: this article linking to the On-Page SEO pillar.)
2. Lateral links. Clusters link sideways to sibling clusters where the topics overlap. Three to six lateral links per cluster is the sweet spot. (Example: this article linking to anchor text optimisation.)
3. Cross-hub links. A cluster in one pillar links across to a cluster in another pillar where the topics meaningfully intersect. (Example: this article linking to crawling, indexing and ranking from the parent What is SEO pillar.)
4. Commercial links. Cluster pages link to relevant service, location or product pages. This is how informational content earns its keep: by passing readers (and authority) to commercial pages that convert. (Example: our SEO service, Local SEO Perth, the free SEO audit tool.)

The mix matters. A cluster with seven lateral links but no upward link to its pillar is missing the spine. A cluster with five commercial links but no lateral links looks like a brochure. The healthiest pages have one upward, three to four lateral, one cross-hub, and two to three commercial links.

Anchor text rules

The anchor text is the visible, clickable part of the link. It carries semantic weight for Google because the words inside it describe what the destination is about.

Five rules we follow:

1. Be descriptive. "Our SEO service" is better than "click here". The reader and Google both know what they will get when they click.
2. Vary across the site. If 200 pages all link to /services/seo with the identical anchor "SEO services Perth", that looks templated. Use variations: "our Perth SEO offering", "the SEO service page", "what SEO actually involves at our agency". Google reads the variation as natural.
3. Match user intent on the destination, not your favourite keyword. If the destination is a service page about technical SEO, the anchor should be about technical SEO, not whatever you wish you ranked for.
4. Stop using "click here", "this", "read more", "learn more". These pass no information about the destination. They are dead anchors.
5. Don't keyword-stuff. Repeating "best plumber Perth WA" across dozens of links to the same page makes the pattern look manipulative. Google notices.

For the full breakdown of anchor text patterns, see anchor text optimisation.

The weekly internal linking workflow

This is the process we run for every client retainer. Twenty minutes a week, compounding for years.

1. Open Search Console Performance report. Filter to pages with high impressions and position 8 to 20. These are pages that nearly rank.
2. Pick the top three. For each, identify the primary keyword Google is showing them for.
3. Find three other pages on the site that mention that topic. Use site search or Screaming Frog's search function. Anywhere you see the keyword in the body copy, that is a potential link source.
4. Add an internal link from each source to the target page. Use varied anchor text, written naturally into the surrounding sentence.
5. Wait six weeks. Track the page in Search Console. The lift is usually 1 to 4 positions and a measurable rise in clicks.
6. Repeat with the next three pages. Then the next three.

That is the entire workflow. Inside 12 weeks of consistent execution you have given every important page on the site 9 to 12 new internal links pointing at it from contextually relevant content. The cumulative ranking effect is often larger than three months of new content publishing.

Finding and killing orphan pages

An orphan page is a URL that exists on your site but no other internal page links to it. Google can find them via the sitemap, but it gives them low priority because nothing on your site says they matter.

Common causes of orphans:

• Old blog posts written before a navigation rebuild and never re-linked.
• Product or service pages that were removed from the menu but not retired.
• Landing pages from Google Ads campaigns that never made it into the main IA.
• Author bio pages that nobody links to from the articles those authors wrote.
• Localised pages (e.g. Perth, Mandurah, Fremantle variants) where the cross-linking was never done.

The fix: find them, then decide whether each one deserves to live. If yes, add internal links from at least three relevant pages. If no, 301 redirect it to the nearest relevant page and remove the URL from the sitemap.

To find them, run a Screaming Frog crawl, then compare the crawl URL list against your XML sitemap. URLs in the sitemap but missing from the crawl (because nothing internal links to them) are orphans. For larger sites the website audit service does this systematically.

Mistakes to avoid

Tools and checklists

1. Screaming Frog. Free up to 500 URLs. The "Inlinks" tab shows how many internal links point at each page. Sort ascending: anything with zero inbound links is an orphan. Sort descending: anything with hundreds of inbound links should probably be a pillar.
2. Google Search Console Links report. Settings → Links → Internal links. Shows Google's view of which pages link to which. Useful for confirming Google sees what you think you have built.
3. Site search. Type site:yourdomain.com "keyword" into Google. Every page that comes up mentions the keyword and could host an internal link to your target page.
4. Our free SEO audit tool. Flags orphan pages, low-link pages, and missing pillar-to-cluster connections in one report.

A monthly internal link checklist

1. Has every page published this month been linked to from at least three other pages?
2. Has every page published this month linked out to at least four other pages?
3. Are there any orphan pages in this month's crawl?
4. Are there pages in positions 8 to 20 in Search Console that could be boosted with three new internal links?
5. Are the cluster pages all linking up to the parent pillar?
6. Are the service pages linking to the location pages they serve?

Perth and WA context

Four real-world Perth patterns we see and the fixes we apply:

Multi-location service businesses. A typical Perth trades business has a homepage, a services page, and 8 to 12 suburb pages (Fremantle, Joondalup, Cockburn, Mandurah, etc.). Almost none of them cross-link properly. We add a "Service areas we cover" block at the bottom of every service page with links to every suburb, and an "Other services in [suburb]" block at the bottom of every suburb page with links to every service. The cross-linked matrix lifts the local pack performance noticeably across the board. See SEO Fremantle, SEO Joondalup, and SEO Cockburn for the pattern in action, and Local SEO Perth for the service side.

WooCommerce stores. Product catalogues with hundreds of SKUs almost always have an internal link problem. Category pages link to product pages, but products do not link sideways to related products. Adding a "Customers also viewed" or "Pairs well with" block of internal links lifts the long-tail product page rankings substantially. The e-commerce SEO guide covers the broader strategy.

Service businesses with no blog. The most common Perth pattern. 15-page site, no blog, services and locations cross-linked unevenly. The fix is a simple "Related services" footer block on every service page and a "Suburbs we serve" block linking out to every location page. No new content. Just internal connection. See the SEO service overview for the model.

Established blogs with a forgotten archive. Many Perth professional services firms (legal, accounting, financial planning) have blogs going back five years with 100 to 300 articles. Most of the older posts are orphans. The fix is a quarterly content audit that promotes the still-useful old posts back into the link graph by adding three or four new internal links to each one from current content. See legal SEO and healthcare SEO for the regulated-industry version.

For the broader on-page picture, the parent On-Page SEO pillar covers how internal linking sits alongside title tags, content depth and entity SEO. For the cross-hub view, What is SEO? frames internal linking inside the wider three-layer SEO model.