The internal linking playbook
Internal links are the one ranking lever entirely under your control. Most stores squander it: authority pooling on the homepage, revenue pages three hops deep, and a growing orphan wing nobody links to.
Search engines discover pages and assign importance substantially through internal links, and shoppers navigate the same paths. A deliberate link architecture — hub-to-detail flows, meshed related pages, no orphans, shallow click depth to money pages — is unglamorous work that compounds. This playbook designs the architecture, implements it in templates so it maintains itself, and installs the checks that catch decay.
Stage 1: Map the graph you actually have
Crawl the store and extract the link graph: click depth per page, in-link counts, and the orphan list. The findings are predictable and still shocking: strong products four clicks deep, collections nothing points to, retired-campaign pages still hoarding links, and content pages that link to nothing that sells. That map is the work list.
Click depth distribution — how many hops from home to each revenue page
In-link counts per page, revenue-weighted to expose the mismatches
The orphan list: pages with no internal path to them at all
Link equity dead ends: heavily-linked pages that lead nowhere useful
Stage 2: Design the flows, implement in templates
The architecture has known shapes: home → hub collections → sub-collections → products, with each layer linking down and back up; related-product and related-collection meshes so no page dead-ends; content pages funnelling to commercial ones; breadcrumbs everywhere for structure and schema. Implement in templates, not by hand — template-level linking maintains itself as products come and go, which is the difference between an architecture and a one-time cleanup.
Stage 3: Watch the graph like the asset it is
Catalogue churn decays link graphs continuously: new products launch under-linked, retired collections leave dangling references, navigation redesigns silently re-route authority. Re-crawl on a schedule, diff against the last graph, and treat new orphans and depth regressions as defects with owners — not as next year’s audit findings.
How it works
Crawl and map
The real link graph extracted: depth, in-links, orphans, and dead ends, revenue-weighted.
Implement flows in templates
Hub-to-detail chains, related meshes, and breadcrumbs built where they maintain themselves.
Diff the graph on schedule
Re-crawls compared against baseline; orphans and depth regressions flagged as defects.
What you get
Revenue pages within two or three clicks of home
Zero orphans, enforced by schedule rather than hope
Link equity flowing to pages that convert, not historical accidents
An architecture that survives catalogue churn because templates carry it
Handled by these agents
Works with
Frequently asked questions
How many internal links per page is right?
As many as genuinely help a user proceed, organised — a related block, a breadcrumb, contextual body links. Hard numeric targets produce link stuffing; the graph metrics (depth, orphans, flow to money pages) are the real scorecard.
Do footer mega-links work?
A footer linking every page dilutes signal and helps no one. Curated footer links to genuinely important hubs are fine; the heavy lifting belongs in contextual, template-driven placements near content.
Does anchor text matter for internal links?
Yes — descriptive anchors ("men’s trail running shoes", not "click here") tell both engines and users what is behind the link. Templates make consistent descriptive anchors nearly free.
Which agents run this?
Visibility owns the graph mapping, design, and scheduled diffs; Builder implements the template-level structures. New-page linking is enforced at creation, because prevention beats quarterly cleanup.
Keep reading
Collection page SEO
Turn empty category grids into pages that can rank for the terms with real purchase intent.
E-commerce SEO at scale
Metadata, structured data, and content across a whole catalogue — not just the top twenty pages.
Run a technical SEO audit
The store-specific audit: crawl reality, indexation truth, structured data, and speed.
Build an abandoned browse flow
Recover interest that never reached the cart — with intent thresholds that keep it welcome.
Put the team to work on your store
Connect your storefront, analytics, and email stack, set a goal, and let the agents run the work end to end. Start on the free plan with your own model key.