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The playbook Moonrank's SEO Agent uses to map a site's internal link graph and route authority from the pages that have it to the pages that need it.
Download the methodology, see how the agent picks sources and anchors, or run it live inside the SEO Agent.
--- name: internal-linking description: Route authority through a site deliberately — from the pages that have it to the pages that need it. owner: Moonrank SEO Agent --- # Internal Linking Internal links are the one ranking factor you fully control. Most sites waste them: authority piles up on the homepage and blog index while the pages that earn money sit three clicks deep with no links pointing at them. ## When to use - Strong pages exist but the commercial pages never rank. - New content takes months to get indexed or find a position. - Your navigation was designed for humans and never revisited for crawlers. ## Inputs - **Required:** a crawl of the site, and the list of pages that matter commercially. - **Optional:** Search Console data, to link with anchors matching real queries. ## Method 1. **Map:** build the internal link graph — inbound links, click depth, and orphans. 2. **Rank:** identify which pages hold authority and which pages need it. 3. **Find hosts:** for each target, find existing pages whose topic makes a link natural. 4. **Write anchors:** descriptive, varied, matching how people actually search. Never "click here". 5. **Place:** in body copy, not footers or nav blocks; a link in a template counts for far less. 6. **Verify:** re-crawl and confirm depth dropped and the target actually gained links. ## Output format A linking plan. For each link: - **From**: the source URL - **To**: the target URL - **Anchor**: the exact text - **Reason**: the query or topic the link supports ## Prioritization rules - Every page should be reachable in three clicks or fewer. - Link from strong to weak; linking two weak pages together helps neither. - No orphans. A page with zero internal links is a page you have not published. - Vary anchors, but keep them descriptive — exact-match everywhere reads as manipulation.
The Internal Linking skill is how Moonrank's SEO Agent turns internal links from an afterthought into a deliberate system: mapping the link graph, finding where authority pools, and routing it to the pages that actually need to rank.
It's written as a SKILL.md, a plain-language instruction format that people and AI agents can both follow. Read it to plan your own linking, or let the SEO Agent generate the from/to/anchor plan and place the links as it publishes.
Downloading the playbook is free with a Moonrank account. Maintaining the link graph as content is added is what the SEO Agent does on an ongoing basis.
“Our blog gets plenty of traffic but our product pages don't rank at all. Why?”
Your product pages have an average of two internal links each, both from the footer. The eleven blog posts that already rank for adjacent queries link out to sources but never to you. Add one in-body contextual link from each of those posts, with anchors matching the queries the product pages target — that's eleven links to three pages, from pages Google already trusts.
A crawl of the domain, plus the pages that actually matter commercially.
The agent measures inbound links, click depth, and finds every orphan page.
For each target page, it finds existing posts where a link is topically natural.
Descriptive, varied anchors placed in body copy — then re-crawls to confirm depth dropped.
Inbound link counts and click depth for every URL on the site.
Pages with zero internal links — published, but effectively invisible.
Links planned from pages that have equity to pages that need it.
Descriptive, varied anchors matched to the queries each target ranks for.
Contextual links inside content, not another row in the footer.
A re-crawl confirming depth dropped and the target actually gained links.