As well as looking at the other websites which link to yours, search engines pay close attention to how your own pages are linked. The pages to which you link most frequently are likely to be those of greatest interest and importance to your readers. When it comes to determining search engine results, Google and Bing may prioritise those pages to which you have linked most often.
Knowing this, your final step in your SEO optimisation process is to identify which pages are the most important on your website. If you are optimizing an ecommerce website, it may help to think in terms of categories. You may sell 20 different types of widgets, and you know that ‘widgets’ is most likely the term that your shoppers are searching for.
Rather than pointing your internal links to a specific widget however, you should concentrate on promoting the category page. Focusing on the top level page will ensure that people do not dismiss your search engine listing for being too specific. It will also help Google better understand that you are a vendor of widgets rather than a specialist who only sells a particular widget.
You should also take care to ensure that internal links read naturally. Google is heavily penalising websites they believe to be using keyword stuffing (over-emphasising certain key phrases) in a bid to manipulate rankings. You are after all looking to help not hinder your SEO strategy.
