John Mueller on internal linking: "one of the biggest things that you can do on a website"

Quote (John Mueller, via Search Engine Journal):

"It's one of the biggest things that you can do on a website to kind of guide Google and guide visitors to the pages that you think are important."

Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/website-architecture-law-firms/349354/

Confidence: Verified.

Practical implication for IA: The mega menu and the in-body cross-links (e.g., "related services" on a vertical page) are not just UX features — they are the strongest internal-linking signal a small site has. A vertical page that doesn't link out to related verticals and shared services is a leaf node; Google reads it as low-importance.