Internal Linking

[frankdefazio]

OSE only shows me as having 24 internal links on my home page.  My internal links and total links are far less than my competitors, some of whom have 1700 on a single page.  My site is www.CenterCityTeam.com and an example of a competitor with far more internal links is www.McCannTeam.com.  1) How do I get that many internal links on a page and 2) do I even want to?

[AlanMosley]

Links send link juice to other pages, this is the same for internal links. It is not so much the number of internal links as the pattern of internal links that's is important. Using your internal links you can push page rank on to certain pages (Usually the home page). Lets say that you homepage ends up with twice as much PageRank as your other pages, then as your site gets more external links the incoming link juice will follow that existing pattern.

Reading this page will explain a bit better http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank

[JaneCopland]

There is definitely no need to strive for more internal links pointing from your home page unless your internal pages are suffering from being "orphaned" (not linked to from anywhere) or having very few internal / external links pointing to them. You definitely don't need 1,700 links pointing out from your home page and it's doubtful the number of links on any one page is used as a ranking factor of any particular significance.

The goal should be to pass PageRank to important parts of the website and aid usability, so if 24 links is doing that job for you, then 24 links is doing that job right.