Internal linking for a small site

A small site gets more from a few honest links than from a footer that lists every URL. The useful link sits in a sentence, at the moment the reader needs the next page, and it says where they are going.

An internal linking strategy for a studio or a young product company is a map of those moments. Each page has one job. A link leaves that page only when another page continues the same job.

Link from the sentence that needs the next page

Write the page first. When a paragraph raises a question the page will not answer, that is the place for a link. A homepage that says the studio builds marketing sites can link the words "marketing sites" to a fuller note on structure, scope, or the first screen. A post about checkout can link the phrase about the email after purchase to the piece that covers that email. The reader should feel the link as the next sentence, not as a citation dumped at the bottom.

Anchor text should name the destination. "Read more" and "click here" waste the only words the reader uses to decide. "How a marketing site gets scoped" tells them what they will get. "Case study" does not, unless the surrounding sentence already named the project.

Google's documentation on title links notes that the words in links are among the sources it can use when it writes the title of a result. That is a side effect. The reason to write a clear anchor is the person on the page. A specific phrase helps them. A vague one makes them guess.

One link per idea is enough. Two links in a paragraph usually mean the paragraph is trying to be a directory. Finish the thought, then offer the single next page.

What a small site should connect

A young company site might have a home page, a page for the offer, a proof page, a short about, and a way to start a conversation. The blog, if it exists, answers the searches those pages cannot hold. The links should follow that shape.

From the homepage, link to the proof and to the one article that explains the offer in more depth. From a project, link back to the kind of work it is an example of. From an article, link to one sibling article and to one commercial page: the services, the work, or the intro call. That is the whole pattern. It can be drawn on a single sheet.

Helpful-content guidance from Google asks whether the site has a primary purpose, and whether a reader leaves able to reach a goal. Links are how that purpose stays visible. A post about dashboards that never mentions the product, and never points at a way to talk, is a magazine article that happened to live on your domain. A post that answers the question and then points at the relevant work is part of the site.

Skip links that exist only to pass authority around. A sentence that says "as discussed in our comprehensive guide to synergy" is not a path. It is a trick, and it reads like one.

Pages that are not ready should not be linked. A "coming soon" URL in the middle of a careful paragraph trains people to ignore the next link you write.

A footer is a spare map

The footer can repeat the main sections: work, services, writing, contact. People look there when they are lost. That job is real, and it is small.

A footer that lists every article, every city, and every synonym for the offer does less. It gives no hint which link answers the question the reader still has. It also makes the honest links in the body look like the same kind of clutter.

Keep the footer stable. Change it when the information architecture changes, not when a new post goes up. New posts earn their links from related sentences. If a post cannot be linked from any sentence on the site, ask whether it belongs on the site.

Navigation and in-page links can share a destination. They should not share the same vague label. The nav can say "Work." A sentence in an article can say "the Thomas Bewick site, an editorial redesign for a heritage craft brand," and point at the work section until that project has its own page.

How many links a page can hold

Count the links a busy person might follow, not the links a crawler might see. A short article can carry two or three body links and still feel calm. A homepage can carry a handful: one per service, one into the work, one into the writing that supports the offer.

Before you add another, remove one that nobody needs. Orphan pages are a sign the map is unfinished. A page with forty outgoing links is a sign the map was replaced by a list.

Use this check on each important URL:

• What is the one job of this page?
• Which single page should a convinced reader open next?
• Which page should a confused reader open next?
• Is that promise written in the anchor, or only in the URL?
• Does the destination actually answer the sentence that linked to it?

If you cannot fill those lines, the link is early. Write the destination, or cut the sentence that pretended to need it.

A pattern you can keep

Pick a cluster and connect it by hand. For a studio, that cluster might be "hiring a partner," "what the site must include," and "what happens after launch." Each piece names the next one in a sentence. The homepage names the cluster once, from the section that matches.

Do the same for a product. A page that explains the product links to the page that shows the interface. The interface page links to the doc that covers the empty state, because that is the screen people meet first. The blog, if you have one, takes the questions the product page should not have to answer at length.

Review the links when you change a URL or retire a page. A redirect can preserve a route. It cannot repair an anchor that still describes the old page. Read the sentence out loud with the new destination in mind.

When you want that map built into the site itself, look at Hanabi's services. The work is design and production code together, so the links a founder follows should move from the offer to the proof without a detour through a pile of URLs.

The piece that shows how a set of posts can support the product, rather than sit beside it, is planning a blog that supports a product. Linking is the last step of that plan. The plan decides which pages deserve a sentence in the first place.