This guide starts from a simple observation: on maillage interne, the gap between sites that progress and the rest rarely comes down to a secret. It comes down to a method applied without exception.
Spotting orphan pages
A page no internal link points to technically exists but has almost no chance of performing. On older sites they often represent a fifth of published content.
Identifying them is easy; deciding their fate is not. Each orphan must be attached, merged or removed — leaving it as is, is not a neutral option.
The three-link rule
Each secondary piece points to its main page, to a sibling of the same level, and receives at least one link from the main page. That minimal reciprocity is enough to form a coherent set.
Beyond that, extra links quickly show diminishing returns, and end up diluting the very signal you meant to concentrate.
A silo is not a folder
The most frequent confusion is believing a cocoon is built in the URL tree. It is built in contextual links, inside the text, where they actually carry meaning.
A clean URL structure helps readability, but it is internal linking that transmits authority and signals thematic kinship.
Keeping the structure alive
A cocoon built once then forgotten degrades with every publication. The habit to install is simple: before publishing, every new piece must know which set it belongs to and who will link to it.
Asking that upfront avoids accumulating isolated content that will need attaching later, at a far higher cost.
Check before moving on
- Assign each point to a named person
- Remove before adding
- Measure before, not after
- Automate every repetitive check
A concrete example
On an editorial site of roughly four hundred pages we supported, methodically applying this principle produced a measurable gain after eleven weeks: more pages actually crawled, and progress on mid-tail queries.
No spectacular action was taken. Most of the work consisted of removing what was in the way, before adding anything at all.
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In practice
Bring this list to your next weekly review and assign each item to a person, with a deadline. A technical topic without an owner stays an untreated technical topic.
