Internal linking as a budget allocation problem

Internal links don't just help users navigate: they're one of the clearest signals a site sends about which pages matter most. Every site has a finite amount of that signal to distribute, whether or not anyone's deciding deliberately how to spend it.

Most sites spend it by accident: the footer links to the same six pages from every single page on the site, diluting the signal evenly across everything, while the pages that actually drive revenue (the money pages) often receive fewer contextual links from content than a random old blog post that happens to rank for something unrelated.

Treating internal linking as an allocation decision means auditing, page by page, which pages should be receiving the most link equity given business priorities, then deliberately building links toward them from wherever relevant context exists in the site's content, not leaving it to whatever links a writer happened to add while drafting.

This is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-cost SEO levers available, because it requires no new content and no new backlinks: just redirecting signal the site already generates toward the pages that matter most.