Add topic-cluster internal links between related pages

Why this matters

Connect each main guide to supporting tutorials and back, then link product pages with descriptive anchors.

Before you start

• Access to edit page content in the CMS
• An export of published URLs from the sitemap or a crawl

How to apply it

1. Export and group URLs by topic and customer task

   Export every published URL from the sitemap or a crawl, then assign each URL to one topic cluster and one customer task in a spreadsheet.

   Check: The spreadsheet has one row per published URL and no URL is assigned to more than one cluster.

2. Choose the main guide and product page per cluster

   For each cluster, select the page that best answers the core question as the main guide, and select the commercial page the cluster should support.

   Check: Every cluster row contains one guide URL and one product URL.

3. Link the guide to supporting tutorials and back

   Add links from the main guide to each supporting tutorial, then add a return link from each tutorial to the guide where it helps the reader continue.

   Check: The rendered guide HTML contains an href to each supporting tutorial, and each tutorial contains a link back to the guide.

4. Add contextual links to product and proof pages

   Inside relevant paragraphs, link to the product page and proof pages using anchor text that describes the destination rather than generic wording.

   Check: Each new anchor names the destination topic or product, and the target URL returns HTTP 200.

5. Have the agent draft source, destination and exact sentence

   For every planned link, ask the agent to return the source URL, destination URL, anchor text and the exact sentence the link will sit in; review the plan before any edit is applied.

   Check: The plan lists source URL, destination URL, anchor text and sentence for each link, and no link is published before review.

6. Plan missing cluster pages and link them from existing articles

   From the cluster gap analysis, list pages that are missing for a topic or customer task, then add links to each new page from the most relevant existing article as it is published.

   Check: The gap list names each missing page, and every published gap page has at least one internal link from an existing article.

<goal>
snippet content image snippet locale serp markup anchor caching pipeline sitemap intent page page.
</goal>

<context>
route image heading audit crawler canonical content priority target image snippet priority audit metadata.
</context>

<discover_first>
page query canonical page caching schema heading render report target serp cluster canonical caching.
</discover_first>

<constraints>
index heading payload effort redirect index verify report image crawl pipeline schema target layout.
</constraints>

<plan>
verify crawler redirect alt page payload locale measure verify render image crawl canonical priority.
</plan>

<verify>
report image audit intent render snippet audit section report template redirect heading anchor snippet.
</verify>

<report>
layout template intent index index metadata pipeline canonical serp crawl locale metadata cluster heading.
</report>

Source: @borjafat on 2026-09-28 · original post · report an error