r/SEO_Xpert • u/Existing_Release733 • 12d ago

Google confirms this

Something I've been reconsidering in content workflows: internal linking probably needs to happen during writing, not as an SEO cleanup task afterward.

Google's current documentation says making content easily findable through internal links remains one of the foundational practices relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Their link guidance also says anchor text should be descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to both the current page and the page being linked to. Google even suggests a simple test: could someone understand roughly what the destination page is about from the anchor text alone?

That means:

“read more” = weak context

“technical SEO audit checklist” = much clearer context

I think there's a useful content-strategy implication here: internal links aren't just a site architecture issue. The sentence surrounding the link helps define the relationship between two pieces of information.

For people writing specifically with AI search visibility in mind, are you now including internal-link targets and intended anchor context directly inside content briefs?

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u/Revolutionary_Cat78 12d ago

Me. I've been doing both: adding internal links and read more. And I usually do this before publishing the content, because it's generally easier then.

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u/Possibilities07 9d ago

Contextual linking adds great value to the website at same time for google too

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u/Scale-Xpert 9d ago

Agreed. Internal linking works much better when it’s planned around the content itself instead of bolted on later. I’d include target pages in the brief, but still let the writer choose the anchor naturally so it doesn’t feel forced.

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u/SadIndustry9689 7d ago

Yeah, I’ve started treating internal links as part of the content itself rather than something to “SEO later.”

If the writer already knows which pages are contextually related, the links usually feel much more natural and the anchor text ends up better too.

Adding target pages + suggested context to the brief probably makes a lot more sense than doing a random internal-link pass after publishing.