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Please help me understand the internal linking logic for authority shaping
Posted by on December 25, 2025 at 11:40 pmI’m working on a new site (low authority (DA 10), ~100 visits/month). All backlinks point to the homepage; all the traffic is coming from the home page.
I plan to publish 50 topically related 200-400 word short blogs focusing on low KD keywords early on.
Here’s the part I’m unsure about:
Instead of linking the homepage to all/ a lot of the new blogs right away, does it make more sense to:
- Publish all the posts first
- Let them get indexed and show up (or not) in Google
- Look at GSC to see which posts actually get impressions and which rank near page 1
- Only then add internal links from the homepage to the few posts that show real search demand and ranking potential
The thinking is:
- The homepage has limited authority to pass
- Adding links from it to everything will dilute authority passed per internal link significantly (since authority decays fast – 85% per hop, is divided by total number of internal links on page, and is topical in nature)
- Pages that already get impressions and are near page 1 seem more likely to benefit from stronger internal links – so only they should be prioritized
So my questions are:
- For a new site, is it reasonable to wait for GSC data before deciding which pages deserve homepage links, as opposed to created hubs and cluster pages exhaustively covering a topic as is widely suggested? Essentially, should the approach be: publish pages/posts in bulk, note the results in GSC, and use the winners (new pages getting clicks) to understand which KWs/queries the next batch of posts need to focus on, and use the near-winners (new pages near page 1) to inform your internal linking?
- Am I correct in thinking query impressions & position is a good signal for which pages should receive internal links from the winning pages (those that are getting clicks)?
- What should happen to the posts that don’t get impressions and have position 20+?
- Is it fine if they only sit in the blog listing / category pages?
- Or should every post still get a little baseline authority from the homepage no matter what?
Trying to understand how people actually handle this in practice for small, early-stage sites.
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1 Reply
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hi u/Legitimate-Salary108 – welcome to the sub
Because the origianl PageRank Patent is public information, it is something you can discuss with an LLM – as long as they dont veer off into any other websites who put up their own interpretation, they are ptetty good at understanding pagerank. And thats the basis for why internal linking works.
I love talking about Topical Authority – so here’s some feedback on where you’re headed:
>Publish all the posts first
>Let them get indexed and show up (or not) in Google
>Look at GSC to see which posts actually get impressions and which rank near page 1
I like this except I would make sure you have some topical authority ***first***. If you don’t -then do it slowly.
>The homepage has limited authority to pass
In 90% of cases, the homepage has the most authority – so I think you should rethink this one
>Adding links from it to everything will dilute authority passed per internal link significantly (since authority decays fast – 85% per hop, is divided by total number of internal links on page, and is topical in nature)
Yep – absolutely right. So do it judiciously – slowly – whats the best page, with the closest coverage of topical authority
>Pages that already get impressions and are near page 1 seem more likely to benefit from stronger internal links – so only they should be prioritized
Yes 100% – this is the right way to go
>Am I correct in thinking query impressions & position is a good signal for which pages should receive internal links from the winning pages
Yes -100%
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Yes, it is clever to wait 2-4 weeks before GSC impressions/positions are available on a low-auth site—why water down good page juice with 50 posts- get the near-top-10 “winners” direct links so they can be boosted to the top in a few days. Low-performers (pos 20+) can hang on category pages or be interlinked in groups; there is no need to love them on a homepage unless they are a surprise. I have done this on startup sites and have seen rankings rise 5-10 positions faster. What’s your niche?
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