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Internal Links
Internal links are links between pages on your own site: the navigation, collection pages listing products, product pages pointing to related items, blog posts linking to the products they mention. They serve two functions at once. They're how crawlers discover pages — a product no page links to is an orphan that may never be crawled or indexed — and they're how authority moves around a site: links from your home page and top collections tell search engines and AI tools which pages you consider most important.
Collections are a store's main internal-link structure, which is why a product in no collection is nearly invisible and why a collection that isn't in the navigation is barely better. The link text matters too: a link reading "Swedish straw ornaments" tells the machine what the destination is about, while "click here" tells it nothing. Good internal linking is free authority and free discoverability. It also happens to be good for shoppers, which is the usual sign that an SEO practice is sound: related products on product pages, descriptive collection links, and blog posts that link the items they discuss all sell as well as they rank.
What it means for your store
A product nobody links to is an orphan: hard to crawl, easy to drop from the index, and weak in rankings. Collections are your main internal-link structure; a product in no collection is nearly invisible. Links from your home page and top collections carry the most weight — that's where your best sellers should be reachable in one click.
Why it matters
It's free authority. The same links that help shoppers browse tell Google and AI tools which pages you consider important.
How CataSEO helps
CataSEO's category and brand pages create a linked structure around every product, and its crawl flags orphaned products.
What you can do yourself
Make sure every product is in at least one collection, and every collection is in the nav or linked from the home page. Add "related products" to product pages. When you write a blog post, link the products it mentions by name. Use descriptive link text ("Swedish straw ornaments"), not "click here."
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