Boosting Internal Links to High-Value Pages Boosts Revenue: An A/B Test

Building on our earlier findings about internal linking, we ran another A/B test to boost internal links to pages with the highest revenue per session. The goal was to increase traffic and grow revenue.

Hypothesis

We believed that adding internal links to pages already bringing in high revenue per session would lead to more traffic and revenue. These pages usually rank well for competitive keywords, so we expected additional links would improve their visibility even further.

Implementation

We doubled internal links to the site’s best-performing pages, those bringing in the most revenue per session. The aim was to increase their visibility and clicks.

We used the InternalLinking.io’s Boost Internal Links recipe template to set up the recipe effortlessly, build the links and publish them.

Just as for our A/B test on internal linking to grow traffic, we used

  • Our API integration with Botify's logfile analyser
  • A direct connection with Google Search Console
  • Our standard A/B testing methodology

Results

The test produced clear results:

  • 237% more Googlebot crawls, tracked using Botify’s log file analyzer.
  • 23% more active pages.
  • 5% more organic keywords.
  • 19% more organic impressions.
  • 47% more organic traffic.

InternalLinking.io A/B testing results showing boosting inlinks boosts revenue

How to Interpret These Results

We saw a significant increase in Googlebot crawls after boosting internal links. But it's important to note that increased crawling alone doesn't always lead to more keywords, traffic, or revenue. Success depends greatly on the quality of the pages.

In this test, we boosted links to pages already proven valuable —- about 6,400 high-performing pages out of roughly 200,000 category pages on the site. Because these pages were already ranking well and generating revenue, increasing internal links had a meaningful impact. However, if these had been new or untested pages, increased crawling might not have translated into higher rankings, more traffic, or revenue.

This test shows the importance of two key factors: first, increasing the quality and quantity of internal links, and second, carefully choosing which pages receive these links. Together, these two approaches significantly improved performance.

Internal linking isn’t just about getting more traffic. It's about helping users easily find what they're looking for. Clear focus on user intent helps traffic convert more easily, growing e-commerce revenue.

Using first-party data, such as identifying pages already generating strong revenue per session, helps teams make smarter internal linking decisions, directly driving revenue growth.

Recommendations

Based on these results, sites should:

  1. Regularly find and add internal links to their top revenue-generating pages.
  2. Use revenue-per-session data to choose which pages get more internal links.

Using internal linking in this way helps sites directly grow revenue.