/seo-internal-linking

name: seo-internal-linking
description: Use when designing or auditing internal linking strategy — pillar/cluster architecture, anchors, orphan pages.
user-invocable: false
related-skills: seo, seo-cluster, seo-content

<objective> Covers internal linking end to end: the pillar/cluster link model (cluster pages link up, pillar links down, cluster pages cross-link contextually), anchor text rules (descriptive/varied vs generic/over-optimized), the local vs global URL architecture and link mesh (global pillar → local pages with geo-specific anchors, regional hub → city pages), the doorway-page quality judgement (differentiate on ≥3-4 dimensions, watch for 70-90% near-duplicate content across local pages), and audits for orphan pages, click depth (≤3 clicks from homepage), link distribution (no page concentrating >10% of internal links), and broken internal links. </objective>

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