Yes, a lot. Internal links (links between pages on your own site) distribute authority across pages, help Google understand the site's structure and hierarchy, and make navigation easier for users. A good internal linking strategy can significantly improve the ranking of important pages.
Internal link building best practices:
- Clear hierarchy: your most important pages should receive the most internal links. The homepage links to categories, categories link to specific pages.
- Descriptive anchor text: use anchor text that describes the destination page. "Learn more about link building" is better than "click here".
- Relevant context: the link must make sense within the content. Linking for the sake of linking, with no relevance, adds nothing.
- Do not overdo it: 3 to 5 internal links per article is a good number. Too many links dilute the value and confuse the reader.
For content clusters, internal links are the glue that connects the pillar and its satellites. Without them, Google does not understand that the articles belong to the same topic, and the topical authority effect is lost.