An internal linking plan built around your money pages

Fibvo editorial · 12 July 2026 · 4 min read

A freight forwarder has published forty articles over three years. Guides to Incoterms, HS codes and container sizes bring in steady traffic. The page that sells LCL shipping to the Gulf gets almost none. Nobody reading the Incoterms guide is told the service exists, and Google is given no reason to connect the two. That is an internal linking problem, and it is one of the few SEO problems you can fix entirely on your own site.

What internal links do

Search engines discover pages by following links. A page linked from the home page and several articles is found quickly and revisited often. A page linked from nowhere may be found only through the sitemap, and is easily treated as unimportant.

Links also carry a share of the authority a page has earned from other websites. Guides tend to attract more external links than service pages, because people link to useful explanations, not sales pitches. Internal links are how that authority reaches the pages that bring enquiries. The clickable words matter as well. Anchor text tells Google what the destination is about, so 'LCL shipping from Chennai to Jebel Ali' carries meaning that 'click here' never will.

Build a hub for each service line

A hub page gives a broad overview of one topic and links to every related page on your site. Those pages link back to it. The result is a clear map of what you know, for readers and crawlers alike.

• Choose one hub per core service line. For the forwarder, that might be sea freight, air freight and customs clearance.
• Write the hub as a genuine overview. Explain the service, the options and who each option suits, rather than listing links.
• Link from the hub to each service page and guide in the topic, with a sentence explaining why the reader might want it.
• Link each page in the group back to the hub, at the point where the broader topic is first mentioned.
• Keep hubs in the main navigation so every service page sits within a few clicks of the home page.

Write anchor text that describes the destination

Good anchor text reads naturally and tells the reader what they will get. It does not need to be an exact keyword every time. Varied wording is normal and reads better.

• Describe the page: 'our comparison of FCL and LCL shipping' rather than 'read more'.
• Vary the phrasing when different pages link to the same destination.
• Do not use the same anchor text for two different pages. It blurs which one should rank for that phrase.
• Place the link in a relevant sentence. A link to the customs clearance page belongs in a paragraph about shipping documents, not one about carton sizes.
• Use standard HTML links with an href attribute. Menus and buttons that work only through JavaScript click events may not be followed.
• Leave internal links followed. Adding nofollow to links between your own pages only withholds the signals you want to pass.

Find and rescue orphan pages

An orphan page has no internal links pointing to it. Campaign landing pages, pages dropped from a menu during a redesign and articles never referenced again are the usual cases. To find them, gather three lists.

• Every URL in your XML sitemap.
• Every URL your crawler reaches by following links from the home page.
• Every URL with impressions in Search Console or sessions in GA4.

Any URL in the first or third list but missing from the second is an orphan. Several crawlers can run this comparison automatically once connected to your sitemap and analytics. For each orphan, choose one outcome: link to it from its hub and a related page, merge it into a stronger page, or retire it with a redirect.

Link every new article to a money page

The habit that keeps a site well linked is a publishing rule. No article goes live without a link to a relevant service page, and every new article receives links from older ones.

• Before writing, name the service page the article supports. If you cannot name one, question whether the article is worth writing now.
• Place the service link where the reader's problem meets your offer, usually just after explaining a task they would rather hand to someone else.
• After publishing, find older articles on the same subject with a Google search for site:yourdomain.com plus the topic, and add a link to the new piece from at least two of them.
• Each quarter, open the Links report in Search Console, check the internal link counts for your service pages and add links wherever a money page sits near the bottom.

Your articles earn the attention. Internal links decide whether any of it reaches the pages that pay.

Keep the plan in a simple sheet: each service page, its hub and the articles linking to it. A service page with an empty row beside it tells you exactly what to write or link next.

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Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.