An internal linking strategy is a decision about which pages should pass attention to which other pages. It is not a plugin setting and it is not a footer full of every URL you have ever published. On a small business site, you can write the whole strategy on one page and finish the edits in an afternoon.
The goal is simple. Your money pages — the services and the contact route — should be easy for both customers and Google to reach from the pages that already get visits. Supporting guides should point at those money pages with words that describe the destination. Everything else is optional.
Name the pages that are allowed to rank
Before you add a single link, list the URLs you want enquiries from. For most local firms that is a short list: homepage, two to six service pages, and contact. Those are the hubs. Guides, FAQs and blog posts are spokes. A spoke can rank for a question, but its job is also to send a ready reader to the hub.
If you cannot say which URL should rank for your main service, the strategy will wander. Pick one URL per offer. Retire duplicates. Our note on website structure for SEO is the step that comes before the linking, because links cannot fix two pages competing for the same phrase.
Write the rules, not a wish
A usable strategy fits in a few lines. Every new guide links once to the service it supports, in the body, with anchor text that names the service. Every service page links to two related guides and to contact. The homepage links to every core service by name. The footer can repeat the main sections, but it does not replace the links in the text.
Anchor text should describe the page someone will land on. “Read more” and “click here” waste the chance to say what the next page is. You do not need to repeat the exact keyword every time. “Emergency boiler repair in Maidstone” and “our boiler repair service” can point at the same URL. Variety reads better and still tells Google the topic.
Use the pages that already have visits
Search Console shows which URLs and queries already get impressions. Those pages are your distribution. Open the top few and ask whether they link to the service you want more enquiries for. If your best-visited guide never mentions the service, the strategy is still on paper.
Also look the other way. A new service page with no links from older content will sit quietly even if the writing is good. Add the links from the homepage, from the related service, and from any guide that mentions the problem that service solves. That is the practical version of “pass authority”. You are showing a path, not gaming a number.
How many links, and where
There is no required count. In a normal guide, a few links in the paragraphs are enough. Put them where the reader would naturally want the next step, not in a block of blue links at the bottom that nobody asked for. On a service page, link out only to pages that help the same customer: a price note, a coverage explanation, a how-to, the contact form.
Check for orphans once a quarter. An orphan is a URL nothing else links to. It might still be in the sitemap, but people will not find it and Google has fewer reasons to treat it as part of the site. Either link to it from a relevant page or remove it and redirect if it ever had visits.
What to stop doing
Do not add the same fifty links to every page through a widget and call it a strategy. Do not point every article only at the homepage. Do not change anchor text every week to chase a new keyword. Do not link to thin tag pages or to old offers you no longer sell. And do not hide links in tabs that never appear in the HTML. If the link is not in the page, it is not part of the strategy.
The longer version of the tactics sits in internal linking strategies that move rankings. This plan is the one-page version you can hand to whoever edits the site: hubs, spokes, anchor text that describes, and a pass over the pages that already get seen.
Review it when the site changes
A new service, a removed page, or a URL change means the map is out of date. Update the links in the same afternoon as the change, and redirect the old URL if people or Google already know it. A strategy that is not updated becomes a pile of broken paths.
If you want that map drawn for the whole site, the design and SEO service includes the page structure and the links between them. Or send the list of services you want enquiries for and we will tell you which pages should point where.
