Tip 8: Link the Dots

A linking routine you will actually keep

Most store owners don’t need convincing that internal links matter. The case has been made elsewhere on this blog: why Shopify internal linking fails when links are an afterthought, and why blog authority often never reaches your key pages. What tends to be missing is the habit.

This tip is the habit. It covers what to do every time you publish, which words to turn into links, and how to catch the pages nothing points to. It’ll take about 15 minutes per post and an hour a month.

To keep it concrete, picture a store selling leather boots. It has collections for work boots, Chelsea boots and boot care, and a blog covering sizing, breaking boots in, waterproofing and resoling. Every example below comes from that store.

The four links a store blog needs

Internal links on an ecommerce site do different jobs depending on where they start and end. Knowing which job each link is doing stops you linking at random.

• Blog to collection. The most important link on any store blog. A post on breaking in leather boots links to the work boots collection, sending both the reader and a clear relevance signal to the page you want ranking for commercial searches.
• Blog to product. Use it when the post names a specific item, such as the waterproofing wax it recommends. Use fewer of these than collection links, because products sell out and get discontinued.
• Blog to blog. Links between sibling posts in the same topic cluster. The break-in guide points readers at the sizing guide, since “my boots are too tight” is half a sizing question. Tip 5 on topic clusters covers how to group these.
• Collection to blog. The forgotten direction. A sentence in the work boots collection description pointing to the sizing guide helps undecided shoppers and tells search engines the two pages belong together.

Both Shopify and WooCommerce let you add links to collection or category description text. Plenty of stores leave that field empty or fill it with a paragraph of keywords. A short, useful description with one or two links to guides is better on both counts, and collection page SEO goes into what else belongs there.

The publish-time routine

Run these six steps for every new post, before or immediately after it goes live.

1. Name the target collection. Every post should support one primary commercial page. If you can’t name one, question whether the post belongs on a store blog. Link to it in the first third of the post, at the point where the reader has enough context to care.
2. Add product links only where you name a product. If the post recommends a specific wax, link the wax. If the advice applies to a whole range, link the collection instead.
3. Link to a few sibling posts. A Google search for “site:” plus your domain and the topic (“leather boots”) turns up related posts you’ve forgotten about.
4. Go backwards. Find a handful of older posts that should now point at the new one, and add a link in a sentence where it fits naturally. It’s the step most stores skip.
5. Update the collection page. If the new post answers a question shoppers have on that collection, add a line and a link to its description or FAQ.
6. Log it. A spreadsheet with four columns is enough: post URL, target collection, links out, links in.

Step four matters because a new post starts life almost orphaned. Its only internal links come from the blog index and perhaps a tag page, and within a few weeks newer posts push it off the first page of the index. Links from older, established posts are what keep it connected.

The log turns out to be the most useful part. After six months it shows which collections are well supported by content and which have nothing pointing at them, which is a better input for your next content plan than a keyword list.

Anchor text rules

Anchor text is the clickable wording of a link. It tells readers what they will get and gives search engines context about the destination. A few rules cover almost every case.

• Describe the destination. “Our men’s leather work boots” tells a reader and a crawler what is on the other end. “Click here”, “this post” and “read more” don’t tell them anything.
• Use the words a shopper would use. Pick natural variations of what the destination page is about (“waterproof work boots”, “our work boot range”, “steel toe cap boots”) and avoid repeating one exact-match keyword across every post.
• Keep it to a short noun phrase. Two to six words is typical. A whole clause as link text is hard to scan and dilutes what the link is about.
• One anchor, one destination. If “boot care guide” links to the care collection in one post and to a blog article in another, readers and search engines both get mixed messages. Keep each descriptive phrase pointed at one URL across the site.
• Link each destination once per post. Linking the same collection four times in one article adds clutter and little else.
• Point at the final URL. When you rename a collection, Shopify can create a redirect, but links in your posts still pass through it. Update them to the new address.

How many links per post

Google has never published an ideal number, and anyone quoting one is guessing. What works in practice for a 1,500-word store post is roughly one collection link, up to three product links where products are named, and two to four links to sibling posts.

Placement matters more than count. A link belongs where a reader would reasonably want to go next: straight after the recommendation, at the end of a step, beside the question it answers. If every paragraph carries a link, none of them stands out, and readers stop clicking.

Find orphaned pages once a month

An orphaned page is one that exists in your sitemap but has no internal links from the body content of other pages. Search engines may still find it through the sitemap, but they get little signal that it matters, and shoppers browsing the site won’t ever reach it. Checking for orphans takes about an hour.

1. List every URL you want indexed. On Shopify, /sitemap.xml links to separate sitemaps for products, collections, pages and blog posts. WooCommerce stores usually get one from their SEO plugin.
2. Crawl the site from the homepage with a desktop crawler such as Screaming Frog, following links only.
3. Compare the two lists. Any URL in the sitemap that the crawl never reached is orphaned. Any URL reached only through blog pagination or tag archives is close to it.
4. Check Search Console’s Links report. The internal links section lists pages by how many internal links point at them. Sort from lowest and look for collections and posts you care about near the bottom.
5. Fix or retire. Each orphan either gets a few contextual links from relevant pages, or, if it no longer earns its place, gets merged into a stronger page and redirected. Tip 10 on recycling content covers that decision.

Prioritise orphaned collections over orphaned posts. A forgotten blog post costs you some traffic; a collection with no internal support costs you revenue.

Worked example: one post, start to finish

The boot store publishes “How to waterproof leather boots”. Here is the routine in action.

• Target collection: boot care, linked in the second paragraph with the anchor “leather boot care products”.
• Product links: the beeswax balm and the spray the post compares, each linked once where it is named.
• Siblings: “How to break in leather boots” and “How to remove salt stains from leather”, linked where the post mentions new boots and winter wear.
• Backwards: the winter work boot buying guide gets a link from its section on wet conditions, and the salt stain post gets one in its final step (“once dry, rewaxing protects the leather”).
• Collection update: the boot care description gains a sentence: “Not sure whether you need a wax or a spray? Our guide to waterproofing leather boots compares them.”
• Log: one new row, with three links out and three links in.

Total time: about 15 minutes. The new post is connected to the page it supports, to its neighbours and to older posts that already have visitors. Nothing about it depends on someone remembering to go back later.

When links break quietly

Three events break internal links without anyone noticing: theme migrations, collection renames and discontinued products. A migration can drop collection descriptions or change URL structures. A rename leaves every old link going through a redirect. A discontinued product leaves links pointing at a page that says “sold out” or returns an error.

After any of these, rerun the orphan check and a broken link report from your crawler the same week. For discontinued products, swap each product link for a link to its collection so the post keeps sending readers somewhere useful. For a large catalogue this is the one check worth putting in the calendar, because a broken link stays broken until someone looks.

This is Tip 8 in Sprite’s 11-part series on ecommerce content that compounds. Next: Tip 9: Think Evergreen.

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