Key takeaways
- Use a visible hierarchy: location hub, region, market, relevant service, supporting guide, and a clear next action.
- Important pages need ordinary crawlable links with concise descriptive anchor text, including on mobile.
- Contextual links should follow a reader’s next question; exhaustive global lists create noise rather than useful relationships.
- Audit orphan pages, link depth, duplicate anchors, broken links, and mobile parity after every large publishing batch.
01
Design routes for people before counting links
A visitor may begin with a market, a service, or a problem. The architecture should support all three without making the header carry the entire site. A location hub can lead to regional hubs; regional hubs can lead to markets; market pages can point to available services and the few guides that explain the local decision.
Service pages should link back to the markets where delivery is described, but not necessarily to every market from every service. Use category pages and curated blocks to keep the path understandable.
Swipe to compare every column
| Page type | Primary job | Most useful onward links |
|---|---|---|
| Location hub | Explain the coverage model | Regional hubs and delivery principles |
| Regional hub | Compare markets in the region | Market pages and relevant service categories |
| Market page | Clarify availability and local constraints | Specific services, evidence, guides and contact |
| Service page | Explain the work and fit | Related services, applicable markets, proof and implementation guides |
02
Use links a crawler and a reader can both understand
Google recommends standard anchor elements with resolvable href values and descriptive anchor text. “Technical SEO for international sites” tells more than “learn more.” Keep the relevant phrase concise and avoid forcing the same long keyword into every link.
The mobile version needs the same important discovery paths because Google indexes the mobile page. Collapsing a navigation is fine; omitting entire regional or service routes from mobile can slow discovery and frustrate the visitor using it.
03
Let context choose the cross-links
A California market page might link to paid growth, CRM integration, technical SEO, a location-page audit, and the contact route. It does not need a paragraph of links to Bangladesh, Kenya, and New Zealand unless the visitor is comparing coverage. Put sibling-market navigation on the regional hub or in a compact related-market block.
Articles should connect to the service and market decisions they support. This creates a web of explanation rather than a ring of pages linking to one another because a template demanded it.
04
Audit the graph after generation, not only the template
Crawl the rendered site and report pages with no internal inlinks, excessive depth, broken destinations, redirected links, repeated vague anchors, and pages linked only from the sitemap. Inspect the paths on mobile and keyboard, not merely the HTML graph.
Sitemaps help discovery but are not a replacement for navigation. Google’s sitelink guidance also points to informative titles, headings, logical structure, and relevant internal anchors. Build those qualities for the visitor; automated sitelinks remain a possible by-product, not an entitlement.
Primary sources and further reading
Use the source material to validate details against your own context and current platform configuration.
- Google Search Central: Make links crawlable
- Google Search Central: Sitelinks best practices
- Google Search Central: Troubleshoot crawling errors
- Google Search Central: URL structure best practices
This field note follows the XenGrowth editorial policy: primary sources where available, visible limitations, material review dates, and no invented first-hand experience.
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