Internal linking strategy for large business websites

Why large sites need a strategy

On a ten-page website, internal linking happens almost naturally. On a site with hundreds of pages — services, sub-services, industries, locations, case studies, blog posts, guides — links must be planned. Otherwise important pages get buried, new pages become orphans and search engines struggle to understand how topics relate.

This website has well over a hundred pages, and its linking follows the system described here.

1. Start with architecture

Define the hierarchy before writing links:

Home
├── Services → service pages → sub-service pages
├── Industries → industry pages
├── Case Studies → case study pages
├── Locations → regions → city pages
└── Resources → Blog / Articles / FAQs

Every page should have a parent, and every parent should link to its children.

2. Hub pages

Hubs (Services, Industries, Locations, Blog, Articles) list and introduce their children. They distribute authority and give users and crawlers an overview.

3. Navigation

• Main menu / mega menu — surfaces priority sections and pages
• Breadcrumbs — show and link the path to the current page
• Footer — links to key services, locations and legal pages

Navigation links are sitewide, so reserve them for genuinely important pages.

4. Contextual links

The most valuable internal links sit inside content, with surrounding context. Plan them by relationship:

5. Anchor text

• Descriptive and natural: "Google Business Profile optimisation guide"
• Varied: not every link to a page needs identical anchors
• Honest: the anchor should match what the target page delivers
• Never "click here" or keyword-stuffed strings

6. Related-content modules

Automated "related services", "related reading" and "nearby locations" sections help at scale — as long as the relationships are genuinely relevant. Define them deliberately rather than relying only on random or recency-based modules.

7. Depth and priority

Keep important pages within about three clicks of the homepage. If a key service is buried five levels deep, add links from the homepage, hub or related pages.

8. Auditing internal links

Run a crawl regularly and check:

• Orphan pages — no internal links pointing to them
• Broken links — internal 404s
• Redirected links — update to final URLs
• Deep pages — important pages too many clicks away
• Inlink counts — are priority pages receiving enough links?
• Anchor diversity — are anchors descriptive?

9. Common mistakes

• Linking every page to every other page (dilutes relevance)
• Footer stuffed with dozens of keyword links
• New content published without linking from existing pages
• Links in images or scripts that crawlers cannot follow
• Linking to noindex or redirected pages from priority pages

10. A simple process for every new page

1. Identify its parent and link from the parent
2. Link from two or three related existing pages
3. Add links from the new page to its parent, related pages and relevant services
4. Check anchors are descriptive
5. Add it to the sitemap

Our technical SEO audits include a full internal link review.