A good ecommerce internal linking strategy for a store with 100+ products is a clear hierarchy (home page to categories to subcategories to products), backed by contextual links from related products, breadcrumbs and buying guides, all built with normal crawlable links. Google says it uses the number of links pointing to a page, and how many links it must follow to reach it, to judge a page’s relative importance on your site. So the way you link decides which categories and products Google sees as your most important.
With a handful of products you can link everything by hand. Past 100 products you need rules and templates instead. This guide shows how to structure those rules, which link types do the heavy lifting, how to write anchor text, and how to audit the result.
| Link type | Where it lives | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Main navigation | Header menu on every page | Signals your most important categories; keeps them a click away |
| Breadcrumbs | Product and category pages | Links products back up to their category and parent categories |
| Category product grid | Category and subcategory pages | The main path for users and crawlers to reach every product |
| Related and complementary products | Product pages | Spreads links sideways between similar or matching items |
| Contextual links in content | Buying guides, blog posts, category copy | Adds descriptive anchor text and promotes chosen pages |
| Footer and utility links | Every page | Policies, contact, key hubs; keep it short |
Disclosure: Optihole is an SEO agency that works on online stores of all sizes. Our team has 6+ years in SEO and has completed 800+ SEO projects for 210+ clients in 45+ countries. This article contains no client data.
Why does internal linking matter more for larger stores?
Google’s ecommerce documentation explains that Google “generally doesn’t look at the structure of URLs to work out the structure of a site”. Instead, “it analyzes the linkages between pages”, and “the more links a page has to it within a site, the higher the relative importance of the page” (Google Search Central). For a store with hundreds of products, that has three practical effects:
- Discovery. Products that are only reachable through site search may never be crawled. Google says Googlebot “generally doesn’t try to submit searches into a search box”.
- Priority. Linking your best sellers and key categories from prominent places tells Google they matter more than a thousand long-tail items.
- Context. Anchor text and surrounding words help Google and shoppers understand what the linked page is about.
If many of your products appear as “Crawled, currently not indexed” in Search Console, weak internal linking is one of the first things to check.
How should you structure links across categories and products?
Think of your store as a pyramid. Google describes the typical pattern: menus link to categories, categories to subcategories, and subcategories to products. For 100+ products, a practical blueprint is:
- Home page: links to top-level categories and a small set of priority categories or best sellers.
- Top-level categories: link to every subcategory and to featured products.
- Subcategories: link to every product in them through a crawlable, paginated grid.
- Products: link back up with breadcrumbs and sideways to a few related or complementary products.
- Guides and blog posts: link into the categories and products they discuss, with descriptive anchor text.
Google notes that it can use “the number of links it needs to follow to reach a page” to infer importance (Google Search Central). In practice, keep important categories one click from the home page and every product reachable within a few clicks. If you run Shopify, the same logic applies to Shopify collection pages.
Which link types scale best for 100+ products?
Manual links do not scale. Templates do. The link types that work automatically as your catalogue grows are:
- Breadcrumbs on every product and category page, generated from your category tree.
- Related products chosen by rules: same subcategory, similar price, same brand or attribute. Keep the block small (four to eight items) so it stays useful.
- Complementary products such as “goes well with” or “complete the look”. These help shoppers and create links between categories.
- Subcategory links on category pages, so every branch of the tree is reachable.
- “Popular in this category” modules that put a handful of strong sellers on category pages and give them extra internal links.
One technical rule applies to all of them: use real links. Google says it “can follow your links only if they use proper <a> tags with resolvable URLs” (Google Search Central). Blocks that load products only after a click, or use JavaScript click handlers instead of links, may not pass any value. Check the rendered HTML to be sure.
How should you write anchor text for store links?
Google’s link guidance says anchor text “tells people and Google something about the page you’re linking to” (Google Search Central). For stores:
- Use the product or category name as it would be searched: “oak dining tables”, not “shop now” or “click here”.
- Keep it natural and short. Repeating the exact same keyword-stuffed anchor everywhere reads badly and helps no one.
- Add alt text to image links. Product grids are mostly images; Google says that for image links it uses the image’s alt attribute as anchor text.
- Vary anchors in content where it reads naturally, such as “waterproof hiking boots” in one guide and “boots for wet trails” in another.
Google also says there is “no magical ideal number of links” on a page, adding: “if you think it’s too much, then it probably is”. Mega menus with hundreds of links and footers stuffed with keyword links are common examples.
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How do content and blog posts fit in?
Buying guides and blog posts are where you have full control over context and anchor text. Use them to:
- Link to categories, not just products. Categories stay live when products change, so the links keep working.
- Promote priority pages. Google suggests that for a best-selling product you might “consider linking to it from the home page or in other content, such as blog posts or newsletters”.
- Link back from categories to guides where a guide genuinely helps shoppers decide, such as a sizing or materials guide.
- Update old posts when products are discontinued, so links point to live pages rather than redirects.
Internal links shape the shopping journey as well as rankings, which is one reason SEO and CRO work together. For a worked example in a fast-moving catalogue, see our fashion store SEO guide.
How do you avoid crawl waste from filters and pagination?
- Filters: filter and sort links can generate huge numbers of URLs. Google’s faceted navigation guidance recommends preventing crawling of filter URLs you don’t need in search (Google Search Central).
- Pagination: link pages in sequence with
<a href>links and give each its own URL and canonical, so products on page 5 can still be reached (Google Search Central). - Sitemaps and feeds as a backup: if some products cannot be linked, Google suggests a sitemap or a Merchant Center feed, but these supplement links rather than replace them (Google Search Central).
- Links to redirects and 404s: update internal links after URL changes instead of relying on redirects.
What mistakes weaken an ecommerce internal linking strategy?
- Products reachable only through search or filters. If a product is not in any crawlable category grid, it may never be found.
- Related-product blocks loaded only on click or scroll, with no links in the rendered HTML.
- Every product linking to the same few items, which piles links onto a handful of pages and leaves the rest buried.
- Links to out-of-date URLs that now redirect, sometimes through several hops.
- Duplicate category paths, where the same products are linked through several near-identical categories that compete with each other.
- Generic anchors such as “view” or “more” on every module, which waste the chance to describe the destination.
Each of these is usually fixed once, in a template or module setting, and the improvement then applies across the whole catalogue.
How do you audit internal links on a large store?
Run an audit after big catalogue changes, and at least a few times a year:
- Crawl the site with a desktop crawler and export internal link counts per URL.
- Find orphan products by comparing the crawl with your product export or XML sitemap. Google says: “Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site.”
- Check click depth for priority categories and best sellers.
- Compare link counts with priorities. If an old, low-margin product has more internal links than your best category, adjust modules and menus.
- Fix links that point to redirects or 404s.
- Review anchor text and image alt text on templates, since one fix applies to hundreds of pages.
Frequently asked questions
How many internal links should a product page have?
Google says there is no ideal number. Include breadcrumbs, a small related-products block and links that genuinely help the shopper, and avoid long lists that nobody uses.
Does URL structure affect how Google understands my store?
Google says it generally doesn’t use URL structure to work out site structure. It relies on the links between pages instead.
Should I link to products or categories from blog posts?
Both can work, but category links are more durable because categories outlive individual products.
Are links in mega menus bad for SEO?
Not by themselves. They become a problem when a menu has so many links that it stops helping users and blurs which pages matter most.
Can a sitemap replace internal links?
No. Google suggests sitemaps and Merchant Center feeds as a way to help discovery when linking is not possible, but links remain the main signal of structure and importance.
What is an orphan product page?
A product page that no other page on your site links to. Google may struggle to find it and has no internal signal that it matters.
Final thoughts
An ecommerce internal linking strategy for a growing store is mostly about rules: a clean hierarchy, breadcrumbs, smart related-product modules, contextual links from guides, and crawlable links everywhere. Set those rules in your templates, promote the pages that matter most, and audit regularly so new products never become orphans.
Want to see how your store’s links really flow? Ask us for an internal linking review (choose “SEO” in the form). We will crawl your store and show which pages are buried, orphaned or over-linked. Site structure work is part of our ecommerce SEO services; see all our services.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Help Google understand your ecommerce site structure
- Google Search Central: Link best practices for Google
- Google Search Central: Pagination and incremental page loading
- Google Search Central: Managing crawling of faceted navigation URLs
- Google Search Central: Learn about sitemaps
