SEO value of links within your site to other pages on your site?

I am taking over a webpage that was created by the previous business owner (actually they hired someone to do it).

Every page on the site is filled with links to other pages on the site…not just the links in the typical nav areas, but scattered throughout the text of the paragraphs as well. Does this help for SEO? They claimed it does… I don’t know crap about SEO. Most of the sites I’ve ever made were for people who could care less about the search engines (family, personal, etc).

If links to pages make sense, keep them, if they don’t then I wouldn’t sacrifice a good user experience for SEO benefits. I wouldn’t design a site primarily based around SEO concerns, you should be concerned about making a quality site with quality content.

All that makes sense…

But my question is if you have a paragraph talking about a service that you offer, you could have the words in the sentances (some of them) link to the pages you are talking about. The visitor would see the paragraph with or without the links so you would not be altering the user experience in a bad way…but if it helps for SEO, than I want to add the links. This is an internet based business (partially) and our website looks as "clean" as our competitors, I just want to get above the on the search results - or at least stay as high as we are.

Yes. Links within a site do help with SEO just as links from another site help. I would keep them but don’t do too many within a short amount of text and make sure you’re using proper anchor text.

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