Recipe: Internal linking strategy planner

Ingredients

• Site crawl export (Screaming Frog or equivalent)
• Keyword-to-URL map for your top 50 target terms
• Content inventory with publish dates and traffic data
• Spreadsheet for pillar-to-cluster mapping

Steps

1. 1
   Identify pillar candidates.

   Pick 3–5 high-volume, broad-intent pages that can serve as hubs. These should rank on page 1–2 already.

2. 2
   Map cluster content.

   For each pillar, list 8–15 supporting articles that cover long-tail variations. Every cluster piece must link up to its pillar.

3. 3
   Audit existing links.

   Crawl each pillar page. Count inbound internal links. Flag pages with fewer than 5 contextual inlinks for priority remediation.

4. 4
   Add contextual links.

   Edit cluster articles to include 2–3 natural in-body links pointing to the pillar. Vary anchor text across pages.

5. 5
   Cross-link clusters.

   Where relevant, link cluster articles to each other. Avoid orphan pages — every page should have at least one inbound internal link.

6. 6
   Measure and iterate.

   Re-crawl after 30 days. Track pillar page rankings and internal PageRank flow. Add links to underperforming nodes.