Start with a full crawl using Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or even Google Search Console's internal linking report to see which pages are orphaned or have fewer than three incoming links. Export that list, then identify your authority pages—typically your homepage, category pages, or articles ranking in positions 1–10 for commercial keywords. Now you're looking for thematic overlap: if you have a strong page about "SEO audits" and a weak page about "technical SEO checklist," that's a natural link opportunity. Use site:yourdomain.com "exact phrase" in Google to find every page mentioning a target keyword without linking to the definitive resource. For example, site:ottawaseo.com "keyword research" will show you every page where you've mentioned keyword research but might not be linking to your pillar guide on it. This uncovers dozens of opportunities in ten minutes. Prioritize based on PageRank flow: link from pages that already rank or get traffic to pages you want to boost. A link from a page in position 4 carries more weight than one from a blog post with zero impressions. We typically see a 15–30% ranking lift on target pages within 4–8 weeks when you add 5–10 contextual internal links from relevant, authoritative pages. Watch your anchor text distribution. Don't hammer the same exact-match anchor 50 times; vary it with partial matches, branded terms, and natural phrases. Also avoid linking to the same page multiple times from one article unless there's a legitimate reason—Google counts the first link's anchor, so additional links dilute focus. At Ottawa SEO, we run quarterly internal link audits across our portfolio. We flag pages with fewer than two inbound links, then batch-add contextual links during content updates. It's low-effort SEO with compounding returns, especially for sites with 100+ pages where link equity is bleeding into dead ends.