A store's guide to choosing a camping stove ranks well, draws steady readers, and sells almost nothing. Its only link to the stoves collection is in the final sentence, past the point where most readers have stopped. The guide did its job; the links didn't. The rule for content that feeds a store is simple: every product and collection a guide discusses gets a link, placed at the moment the reader is ready to act.
A link does two jobs at once
For the reader, a link is an offer made at a moment. Readiness peaks when the guide says "for two people on a weekend trip, choose this stove", and the same link is worth far less in the introduction, before the reader trusts you, or in a footer after they've gone.
For Google, internal links are how it finds pages and how it judges which ones matter. A product page that only the collection grid links to is a step from invisible; a product page that a well-read guide links to, with its name as the link text, gets crawled more often and is easier to understand. Guides also tend to be the pages other sites link to, and the trust they earn flows through their links to the products they recommend.
Internal links to money pages covers the site-wide structure. This lesson is about what happens inside a single guide.
Put the link where the decision happens
Work through the guide with one question in mind: at which sentence would a reader decide. Then put the links there.
- Link the product at the sentence that recommends it. "Mostly mud and narrow feet: the Ridge" carries the link on the product's name.
- Link each row of the closing scenario-to-product list. Readers who skim still land on a product.
- Link the collection once, near the top, for readers who would rather browse the whole range. One collection link, not a row of them.
- Link a comparison or FAQ wherever the guide raises a doubt it doesn't settle, such as whether the waterproof version is worth the extra cost.
Don't rely on a related-products carousel as the guide's only link to the store. It sits below the content, and if it's injected by a script that fails to render, Google may never see it. Links in the body text are seen by everyone.
Link only what you sell and expect to keep selling. A recommendation that leads to a discontinued product is worse than no recommendation, because the reader was ready.
Make the link text name the product
Google's link best practices on Search Central ask for links written as ordinary HTML anchors, with text that tells a reader, and Google, what the target page is about. "Click here" and "this shoe" tell neither. The product's name does, and for a collection, the collection's name with the attribute that matters: "waterproof trail running shoes" rather than "our range".
Two habits keep this natural. Link the first mention inside a recommendation, not every mention on the page; a paragraph where every third word is a link reads like a catalogue. And vary the wording the way you would in speech: the product name once, "the Ridge in the wide fit" later, the collection by its plain name.
Link to the canonical URL and keep the links alive
Most platforms give a product more than one address. On Shopify, a product reached through a collection carries the collection in its path, and the page's canonical tag points back to the plain product URL. Link to the canonical address directly. Linking to the duplicate asks Google to consolidate the two first, and the same is true of links that carry tracking parameters. Duplicate URLs and canonicals shows where these duplicates come from.
Links also rot. A product is discontinued, a collection is merged, a URL handle is edited, and the guide still points where it always did. Whenever you retire or rename a product, search your guides for it and move the link to the replacement. Out-of-stock and discontinued products covers what to do with the old page itself.
Close the loop from the product back to the guide
The shopper who lands on a product page from a search is often the one who hasn't decided. A single line below the buy box, "read our guide to choosing a stove", helps that shopper without competing with the add-to-cart button, and gives the guide a link from a page Google already visits. Keep it to one link per product page and point it at the guide that actually covers that product, not a generic blog index.
What to take away
- Every product and collection a guide discusses gets a link, placed at the sentence where the guide recommends it, because that is when the reader is ready.
- Link text should name the product or collection so the reader and Google both know where the link leads.
- Link to the canonical product URL, never a collection-path duplicate or a tagged URL, so the link's value lands on one page.
- Link back from each product page to the guide that covers it, and update a guide's links whenever a product is retired.
Next
Your platform creates duplicate URLs you never asked for, and Duplicate URLs and canonicals shows where they come from and how to point them home.