Internal Linking in the AI Era
The highest-leverage on-page lever you control — now compounded by AI search. 5–25% organic lifts from independent A/B tests and +100–150% AI search traffic from adding three to five contextual links. Evidence, case studies, an audit framework, and a matched-pair experiment design.
How LLMs Decide What to Cite
Only 12% of AI citations overlap across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude — each runs a different ranking machine. An interactive synthesis of six research streams: schema, internal linking, content structure, pruning, and per-LLM semantic tuning, with the writing rules and citation-lift data behind each.
Schema in 2026: Where Structured Data Still Moves Rankings
Vendor studies say yes, Ahrefs says no. We reconcile the conflicting evidence and map the few entity types that still earn their keep.
The Topical Cluster Playbook: Inverted Authority in Practice
Step-by-step build of the cluster model that held rankings 2.5× longer after the Dec 2025 HCU — from pillar selection to anchor mapping.
Anchor Text Field Guide: The Distribution Rule
Why anchor diversity beats exact-match density, the 3–8 word sweet spot, and a copy-paste audit for the anchors you already have.
Orphan Pages & Link Equity: The Silent ROI Killer
Pages with backlinks but zero internal links waste authority that costs nothing to redistribute. How to find them and the order to fix them in.
Programmatic Internal Linking at Scale
Rules, guardrails, and tooling for sites with thousands of pages — automating contextual links without tripping the related-posts trap.