What's the best internal linking strategy for articles and on-site resources?

[pbhatt]

We recently added an education center to our site with articles and information about our products and industry. What is the best way to link to and from that content?

There are two options I'm considering:

1. Link to articles from category and subcategory pages under a section called "related articles" and link back to these category and subcategory pages from the articles:

category page <<--------->> education center article

education center article <<---------->> subcategory page

2. Only link from the articles to the category and subcategory pages:

education center article ---------->> category page

education center article ---------->> subcategory page

Would #1 dilute the SEO value of the category and subcategory pages? I want to offer shoppers links to more information if they need it, but this may also take them away from the products. Has anyone tested this?

Thanks!

[chris.kent]

Interlinking between articles is the best way. Additionally I think bread crumbs may solve your problem(list of links traveled to get to that page). They are semi-navigational so they will assist visitors finding more info, and Google is pretty good at distinguishing navigation links from contextual links.