Internal Linking for Ecommerce Sites
Ecommerce SEO & Content8 min read
Ecommerce internal linking is the practice of connecting the pages inside your store to each other with descriptive links so both shoppers and search engines can reach every important page. The most reliable structure for a Shopify store is hub-and-spoke: collection pages act as hubs, individual products cross-link to related products, and blog posts link down to the products they discuss. Done well, this passes ranking signals toward the pages that earn revenue and makes sure nothing gets stranded where crawlers cannot find it.
Why internal linking is different for ecommerce
A content site has maybe a few hundred pages. A store can have thousands: every product, every collection, every tag page, plus the blog. Google finds and ranks pages by following links, so a product that nothing links to is hard for Google to discover and easy for it to ignore. Google's Search Central documentation describes internal links as one of the ways Google finds pages and understands how they relate to each other. On a store, the pages that most need that help are usually the deep product pages that sit four or five clicks from the homepage.
Internal links also spread authority. When a page earns links from other sites, some of that value flows through its internal links to the pages it points at. Your homepage and top collections usually hold the most authority because they attract the most links and sit at the top of the navigation. Deliberately routing links from those strong pages toward the products and collections you want to rank is the core of an internal linking strategy.
The hub-and-spoke system
Picture your store as a set of hubs with spokes radiating out. A hub is a page that groups many related pages and holds authority. A spoke is a specific page you want the hub to support. Three link types build the system.
1. Collections as hubs
Collection pages are your most powerful internal linking asset because they naturally sit high in the site structure and link to many products at once. Every product should belong to at least one collection, and every collection should be reachable from your main navigation or from a parent collection. If you sell running shoes, a
Running Shoes collection is the hub and each shoe is a spoke. Cross-link related collections too: a Trail Running collection can link to Waterproof Jackets in its description if buyers commonly need both. The on-page setup matters here, so it is worth reviewing how your collection pages are structured for search before you scale linking up.2. Product cross-links
Products should link to other products, not just up to their collection. Two patterns work well: related products (same category, the alternatives a shopper compares) and complements (items bought together). A related-products block under a product, or a short line in the description like
pairs well with our merino socks, creates spoke-to-spoke links that keep shoppers moving and give crawlers more paths. Keep them relevant. Linking a phone case to a garden hose helps nobody.3. Blog-to-product links
Your blog is where you capture informational searches, and it is the best place to send readers toward products with descriptive links. A post titled
How to choose trail running shoes should link to the trail running collection and to two or three specific shoes it mentions. This is the bridge between content and revenue, and it works best when posts are planned around the products they support rather than written in isolation. If you are building this out, a content plan tied to your catalog keeps blog posts pointed at pages that can actually convert.| Link type | From | To | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Navigation | Header / footer | Top collections | Set the hierarchy and pass authority to key hubs |
| Hub to spoke | Collection page | Its products | Help Google discover and rank every product |
| Spoke to spoke | Product page | Related / complementary products | Cross-sell and add crawl paths |
| Hub to hub | Collection page | Related collection | Connect categories buyers shop together |
| Content to spoke | Blog post | Collections and specific products | Turn informational traffic into product visits |
| Spoke to content | Product page | Relevant buying guide | Support the buying decision and add depth |
Anchor text: what to write in the link
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words in a link. It tells the shopper and Google what the destination page is about, so vague anchors waste the signal. Google's Search Central documentation recommends writing anchor text that is descriptive and concise and gives a sense of the page being linked to. For ecommerce that means using the product or category name and, where it reads naturally, the term you want the page to rank for.
| Instead of | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
click here, this product, read more | waterproof trail running shoes | Describes the destination and carries the keyword |
| The bare URL | The product or collection name | Readable for shoppers and screen readers |
| The exact same phrase on every link to a page | Natural variations like trail shoes or off-road running shoes | Avoids a spammy, over-optimized pattern |
| A whole sentence wrapped in the link | Three to five focused words | Keeps the signal tight and the link scannable |
Two cautions. First, do not force an exact keyword into every link. A natural mix of the product name, the category, and close variations reads better and looks less manipulative. Second, if you link to the same page more than once from a single page, put your most descriptive anchor on the first, most prominent link rather than burying it under a vague one.
The orphan-page finder workflow
An orphan page is a page with no internal links pointing to it. Nothing in your navigation, no collection, no product, and no post links to it, so the only ways in are the sitemap or an external link. Orphans are common after you delete a collection, unpublish a seasonal category, or bulk-import products that never got assigned to a collection. They are the single biggest internal linking problem for most merchants because the page exists, it may even be good, but it is close to invisible.
- 1Get the full list of live URLs. Export your products and collections from Shopify and pull your XML sitemap (usually at
/sitemap.xml), which lists the pages your store thinks should be indexed. - 2Get the list of internally linked URLs. Run a crawler that starts at your homepage and follows only internal links, or use a site audit tool. This is every page reachable by clicking.
- 3Compare the two lists. Any URL in the sitemap or product export that the crawler never reached is an orphan or near-orphan. These are your targets.
- 4Triage each orphan. Ask whether the page deserves to exist. If yes, link to it. If it is a dead seasonal or discontinued product, redirect it to the closest live page or its parent collection instead.
- 5Add real links. For each keeper, add at least one link from a relevant hub: assign the product to a collection, add it to a related-products block, or mention it in a blog post. One good hub link is usually enough to rescue a page.
- 6Re-check after the next crawl. Confirm the page is now reachable, and over time confirm in Search Console that it is getting crawled and indexed.
A worked example (illustrative)
Imagine a store deletes an old
Summer Sale collection that linked to 40 products. Twelve of those products were only ever in that collection. The moment it is deleted, those twelve become orphans: still live, still in the sitemap, but linked from nothing. The fix is not to recreate the sale. It is to assign each of the twelve to an evergreen collection they belong in, so a permanent hub links to them again. This example is illustrative, not real store data.Common mistakes
- Relying only on navigation. Menus link to top collections, not to individual products. Without collection-to-product and cross-links, deep products stay hard to reach.
- Generic anchor text everywhere.
Shop nowandclick heretell Google nothing about the destination. - Linking every page to every page. A wall of unrelated links dilutes the signal and confuses shoppers. Relevance beats volume.
- Ignoring orphans after catalog changes. Deleting collections and unpublishing products silently creates orphans, so re-audit after any big catalog edit.
- Broken internal links. Links to deleted products or old URLs waste crawl paths and frustrate shoppers. Fix or redirect them.
- One-directional blog links. Posts link to products, but products never link back to the guides that help buyers decide. Two-way links help both.
Internal linking checklist
- Every product belongs to at least one collection that is reachable from the main navigation.
- Every collection links to all of its products and to at least one related collection.
- High-authority pages (homepage, top collections) link toward the products you most want to rank.
- Product pages include a related or complementary products block with relevant links.
- Each blog post links to the collection and two to three specific products it discusses.
- Anchor text is descriptive and varied, using product and category names rather than
click here. - You have run an orphan-page check and every keeper page has at least one hub link.
- Broken internal links and links to deleted pages are fixed or redirected.
- You re-audit internal links after every major catalog change or bulk import.
Automating this at scale
You can build and maintain all of this by hand, and plenty of merchants do. The catch is upkeep: internal links break, orphans appear after catalog edits, and a link audit is exactly the repetitive work that slips when you are running a store. Automation helps because an engine can re-check every link after each publish. Pokra runs six engines continuously on a Shopify store: its Technical SEO Intelligence flags broken internal links, canonical conflicts, and thin or duplicate pages, and its Discovery and Indexation engine verifies with Google whether a page is actually indexed, which is the real test of whether a rescued orphan is doing its job. It structures and measures rather than promising rankings or a place in an AI answer, and that is how Pokra routes authority to the pages that need it.
Related reading
For the wider picture, start with the complete ecommerce SEO guide. To get the hub pages themselves right, see collection page SEO for Shopify. And to plan the blog posts that feed links to your products, read how to build an ecommerce content strategy.
Related reading
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