seo-internal-linking

Internal Linking

Pillar/Cluster Model

• Pillar page: broad topic, targets head keyword (e.g. "SEO Guide")
• Cluster pages: subtopics, target long-tail (e.g. "SEO meta tags", "SEO schema")
• Cluster pages link up to pillar
• Pillar links down to all cluster pages
• Cluster pages cross-link contextually

Anchor Text Rules

• ✅ Descriptive, varied, natural ("learn how to validate JSON-LD")
• ❌ Generic ("click here", "read more")
• ❌ Over-optimized exact match (looks spammy, can trigger penalties)

Local vs Global Architecture (2026)

URL structure (placeholders, no real city):

/services/[service]/              → global pillar — primary "[service]", NO city in title/H1
/zones-intervention/[region]/     → regional hub — groups the local pages, owns "[service] [region]"
/zones-intervention/[city]/       → local page — Map Pack target, owns "[service] [city]"

Link mesh:

• Global pillar /services/[service]/ → down to each local page with a geo-specific anchor ("[service] in [city]"), and each local page → back up to the pillar.
• Regional hub /zones-intervention/[region]/ → down to its city pages, and back up.
• Keep navigation/footer lean: link the hub, not a grid of every city (a city footer grid dilutes PageRank and triggers near-duplicate suppression).

Anti-cannibalization (local/global): the primary keyword is exclusive per page — pillar = [service] (no city), local = [service] [city]. See seo-cluster for the one-intent-one-URL rule and when to split.

Doorway pages — quality, not a number

Doorway risk is a quality judgement, not an absolute page-count threshold. One local page per documented presence/service area, each differentiable on >= 3-4 dimensions (local testimonials, local FAQ, geo context, area-specific services/hours). Risk signal: 70-90% identical content across local pages (templated city-name swap) → near-duplicate suppression.

Audits

• Orphan pages: pages with 0 internal incoming links
• Click depth: every page reachable in ≤ 3 clicks from homepage
• Link distribution: no page concentrates >10% of internal links
• Broken internal links: 404s within site

Workflow

1. Crawl site (cheerio + breadth-first)
2. Build link graph (page → outgoing links)
3. Compute click depth from homepage
4. Detect orphans and dead ends
5. Suggest contextual link insertions based on topic clusters