Optimize Internal Linking with SEO-AEO Analysis

Internal Linking Skill builds, audits and optimizes the internal link structure across a set of pages or a full site. It activates on requests such as internal linking strategy, find internal link opportunities, link these pages together, internal link map, suggest anchor text, fix orphan pages, internal links for a page or topic, and link equity distribution. It returns prioritized link suggestions with anchor text and a context sentence, an orphan page alert, cannibalization risks, a link equity map and an action checklist.

Use it when mapping links between existing pages, identifying orphaned content, or improving conversion paths from informational pages. For a foundational content system, every article should have a contextual path to a relevant product, signup, pricing, demo or next-step page. The skill warns against adding the same CTA or an exact-match anchor mechanically to every article, so the destination should match the reader's intent.

Its recommendations depend on the completeness and accuracy of the page inventory you supply and cannot replace a live crawl. If the project already provides a semantic-link helper, it can be used as a supplementary check, and otherwise the checks are completed manually with the evidence recorded.

The input is a JSON object with a list of pages, each having a title, URL (blank if not yet live), primary keyword, page type (pillar, cluster-article, landing-page, blog-post or product-page) and a one to two sentence content summary. It also accepts a focus page you most want to boost with incoming links, optional cluster context, product pages that should receive relevant CTAs, and optional audit findings about orphans, cannibalization or priorities.

Every suggestion is labelled with one of four link types:

• Pillar to Cluster: the pillar links to a cluster post and distributes authority downward.
• Cluster to Pillar: a cluster post links back to the pillar, consolidating authority upward. This is the highest priority, and every cluster article must have at least one, with no exceptions.
• Cluster to Cluster: related posts build semantic depth across the topic.
• Contextual Boost: any page links to the focus page to concentrate link equity.

Anchor text follows strict rules. An exact-match anchor may be used at most once per target page across the site, a partial-match anchor at most twice, and a branded anchor is unlimited. Generic anchors such as click here or read more are never used and are flagged as errors, and a naked URL as anchor is avoided unless there is no alternative. A repeated exact-match anchor for the same target is flagged as a Cannibalization Risk.

The report has a fixed structure: a summary table (pages analysed, opportunities found, orphan pages, cannibalization risks, focus page incoming links, pages exceeding the link limit); an orphan page alert listing pages with no incoming links along with a suggested source page; link opportunities in High, Medium and Low priority tiers, each with link type, source, target, anchor text, anchor type, placement in the source page, a written context sentence with the anchor in brackets, and the impact; a cannibalization table with an alternative anchor; a link equity map showing links received, links sent and cross-links; a links-per-page check; and an action checklist.

Two page-level rules apply: no page should have more than 100 outgoing internal links, and the focus page should have the highest incoming link count.

The process has twelve steps, including reading cluster context, indexing pages by type so pillars receive the most incoming links, orphan detection, building a semantic overlap matrix from keywords and summaries, assigning link types, writing natural context sentences, checking anchors for duplicates, sorting into priority tiers, building the equity map, checking links per page, checking product-page paths separately, and verifying against the real inventory.

It receives output from seo-aeo-content-cluster and seo-aeo-content-quality-auditor and feeds seo-aeo-schema-generator.

SEO specialists, content strategists and site owners who want a systematic linking plan that strengthens pillar pages, rescues orphaned content and creates natural conversion paths.