Internal linking strategy is how you deliberately connect pages within your domain using hyperlinks to shape crawl priority, distribute authority, and guide both users and search engines through your content hierarchy. It's not about randomly dropping links. It's about building a structured system that reinforces what matters. The core mechanics: every internal link passes a fraction of the source page's authority to the destination page, similar to how external backlinks work but fully under your control. Google uses these links to discover pages, understand topical relationships, and determine which pages you consider most important. A page linked from your homepage and 20 product pages signals higher priority than one buried three clicks deep with one inbound link. A functional strategy typically includes four link types. Navigational links in headers and footers provide baseline crawlability. Contextual links within body content carry the most SEO weight because they're editorially placed and use natural anchor text. Breadcrumb links reinforce hierarchy. Related content modules at the end of articles distribute authority horizontally across topic clusters. At Ottawa SEO, we usually aim for 2-5 contextual internal links per 1,000 words, prioritizing relevance over volume. We link high-authority pages like the homepage to conversion pages and cornerstone content. We avoid orphan pages with zero inbound links and fix broken internals immediately since they waste crawl budget. The anchor text matters. Exact-match anchors for internal links are safe and effective, unlike with external link building. "Ottawa web design services" works better than "click here" for passing topical relevance. Common mistakes: linking only to the homepage, using the same anchor text hundreds of times site-wide, or building deep silos where related content never connects. Internal linking isn't a one-time task. As you publish new content, you retrofit links from older relevant pages to reinforce clusters. With a 500+ domain portfolio, we track internal link profiles in Screaming Frog monthly to catch structural decay before rankings slip.