Everyone asks how to get external links. Almost nobody manages the links they fully control. Which is strange, because internal linking is the one ranking lever where you hold every single valve — and most sites leave them half-closed.
Links distribute trust
Your homepage accumulates the most external links, so it carries the most authority. Every click from it flows value downward. A page that's four clicks deep through orphaned menus gets a trickle. The same page, linked from the homepage and three strong articles with descriptive anchors, gets a river. Same site, same content, different plumbing.
The three-link rule per new post
When you publish anything, do three things before you close the tab. One: link to it from two or three older, stronger pages, with anchors that describe what it covers. Two: link from it to your two most commercially important pages. Three: check it isn't an orphan — reachable from navigation or a hub page. Fifteen minutes. Do this for a year and your site will behave like a different machine.
Anchors are free context
"Click here" tells search engines and readers nothing. "our guide to crawl budget" tells both exactly what's coming. You don't need keyword-exact anchors everywhere — that looks manufactured. Descriptive, varied, honest anchors win. Think of each anchor as a tiny headline for the destination.
Audit once, fix forever
Twice a year, crawl your own site (free crawlers exist, or use the links report in Search Console). Look for three diseases: orphan pages nobody links to, pages buried more than four clicks deep, and important pages that only ever receive "click here". Each is a same-day fix. None requires a developer, a budget, or permission from anyone. Which raises the fair question — what's your excuse?
