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Internal links do two jobs: they let crawlers discover pages, and they distribute authority between them. On large catalogues they are the main determinant of which pages get indexed at all.

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The rules that matter

Every page should be reachable within about three clicks of the homepage. Deeper pages are crawled less and rank worse. No orphans. A page with no internal links pointing at it is effectively invisible, even if it is in the sitemap. Sitemaps aid discovery; links confer value. Link to canonical URLs. Linking through collection paths or parameter URLs sends mixed signals even when canonicals are correct. Descriptive anchor text. “Waterproof hiking boots” tells a crawler what the destination is about. “Click here” and “read more” tell it nothing.

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Patterns that work on ecommerce sites

Articles should link to categories more often than to individual products. Categories are the commercial pages, they persist while products come and go, and they pass authority down to products anyway.

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Where authority concentrates

The homepage holds the most authority, and it flows outward through links. Practical consequences:
  • Pages linked from the homepage and main navigation receive the most
  • Pages reachable only through pagination or search receive very little
  • Linking to everything from everywhere dilutes the signal about what matters
Be deliberate: the navigation should point at the categories you actually want to rank.

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Common failures

  • Products only reachable through filters. Filter URLs are usually blocked, so those products are unreachable.
  • Related-product modules rendered by JavaScript. If links are not in the served HTML, many crawlers will not follow them.
  • Broken links to deleted products accumulating over time.
  • Every article linking to the homepage rather than to the relevant category.
  • Deep pagination as the only route to most of the catalogue.

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What Ryze does

Ryze audits internal linking during the technical audit, identifies orphan pages, and ships internal linking adjustments with approval. Generated articles are published with internal links to your key pages rather than as isolated content.