SEO & Performance
Internal Linking Strategy
Internal links are how both users and search engines discover pages that aren't in the main navigation, and how authority flows from well-linked pages to newer or deeper ones. A site with strong content but no deliberate internal linking structure often has pages that are functionally invisible — reachable only by direct URL, never through normal browsing.
This is architecture work as much as SEO — deciding how categories, hub pages, and individual content pages should reference each other.
What a Deliberate Structure Looks Like
- arrow_rightEvery content page links back to its parent category or hub page
- arrow_rightHub pages link out to their child pages, grouped logically rather than as a flat list
- arrow_rightRelated-content sections connect pages on similar topics to each other
- arrow_rightContextual links within body content point to genuinely relevant pages, not just a sidebar widget
- arrow_rightDescriptive anchor text ('Next.js SEO implementation') instead of generic anchors ('click here', 'learn more')
Finding and Fixing Orphan Pages
An orphan page has no internal links pointing to it — it might still be indexed if it's in the sitemap, but it gets little of the authority or discovery benefit that comes from being linked from relevant, established pages. A full site crawl compared against the sitemap is the standard way to find these.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many internal links should a page have?add
There's no fixed number — the standard is relevance, not quantity. A handful of genuinely related links in context is more useful than a long list of tenuously related ones added just to hit a target count.
Does anchor text really matter?add
Yes, to a meaningful degree — descriptive anchor text gives both users and search engines a clear signal about what the linked page covers, which generic anchors like 'click here' don't provide.
How do I find orphan pages on my site?add
Crawl the site with a tool that follows links (not just reads the sitemap) and compare the discovered pages against your full sitemap — anything in the sitemap but not reached by crawling internal links is an orphan.