Something odd happens once you have about ten articles. You have clearly written around the same subject several times, yet visitors read one piece and leave, and rankings barely move. The cause is usually the same: your articles do not know about each other.
A link speaks to two audiences
Internal links do two jobs at once. For readers, a link is the next path. When it follows naturally from what they have just read, it registers as help rather than promotion.
For search engines, links describe the structure of the site. When several articles point at one piece, that piece reads as central to the subject. You are effectively saying what your site is about by linking.
One centre, several branches
The shape is simple. A broad article sits at the centre; narrow pieces point to it; the centre introduces the narrow pieces in turn.
Link branches to each other as well, but only where they genuinely connect. Force a link between unrelated pieces and the reader clicks once, then stops trusting your links entirely.
The words on the link are half of it
What you wrap the link around matters as much as where it goes. “Here” and “read more” tell nobody what is coming. Writing what the destination actually says lets the reader decide whether to click, and gives the search engine the same description.
Quantity matters too. Too many and the prose stops being readable; none at all and the article is a dead end. Roughly three or four in the body and one next step at the end sits comfortably.
Go back to old posts every time you publish
This is the step people actually skip. Linking from a new article to older ones happens naturally while writing. Linking from the old articles to the new one requires setting time aside.
Spend ten minutes right after publishing. Open two or three related older posts and add a sentence with a link in each. That single habit makes the site denser every time it grows; skip it and you are left with a thin structure where only the newest post is connected.
Article structure was covered in part three, and more on link structure and indexing sits in the SEO archive. To have structure, indexing and speed sorted in one pass, see our optimization program.
Next part
With the structure settled, what remains is keeping it going. The next part is publishing rhythm — why one article a week beats eight in a month.