Internal Linking Conundrum

[Andrew-SEO]

Hello

I have a web site with a menu structure with three levels

Top Level (Single Item) > First Level (Single Item) > Second Level (Multiple Items)

The first level pages do not rank well. The top level and second level pages rank well.

Search Console acknowledges 600 internal links to the top level.

600 to the second level.

But only 100 to the first level.

This is true across 6 top level items. It is not to do with page level links. It just isn't acknowledging all the links to the first level.

Does anyone know why this might be?

Thanks for any assistance you can give me.

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Could it be that the top level pages are much more competitive than their sub levels?  Usually top level pages are more generic keywords that have massive volume and a whole lot more competition.  Also could it be worth using a visitor recording software like HotJar to see how people are navigating through your site.

I have tried to do (the almost definct now) practice of 'page rank sculpting' to use my power pages to give authority to my less powerful or newer ones to help them rank.  What I've found is that it's not just having the link present but it's people using the link and navigating from the powerful page to the newer page or not so powerful one that gives it the ability to rank.

So to give you an example I run a dentists and put a link from my very authoritative Veneers page to my much newer and less authoritative Dental Implants page.  But when I looked at the stats in Analytics and the recordings on Hotjar I saw that nobody ever clicked the link because those customers didn't want that product.

However, when I did the same thing to my 'teeth whitening page' it shot up the rankings because people were actually leaving the veneers page to look at whitening because it's a related product.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not just the presence of the link but people using it and user generated feedback that seems to pass ranking power.  So I took out all the lesser used links and saw really great results.

Perhaps this is not the answer you're looking for but if you could give more specifics about the terms and words and topics then maybe we could help some more.  Navigation is something I really took a while to get my head around and even longer to make it work effectively to rank for the my main topics.  Also remember that the longer tail sub--categories usually carry more commercial intent so ranking for "Composite Veneers Cost" In my case makes me 10x more money for my practice than ranking for 'Veneers' where people want to research and just look at them - and sometimes they're not even looking for dental but wooden floors and kitchen veneers!

[Andrew-SEO]

Thanks for the response but that's not really what I'm asking.

Search console is not registering the internal links to the middle level of menu items.

It is saying that the lower pages have many more internal links which is not true. Google rates the importance of pages by the number of internal links they have.

[Andrew-SEO]

Im going to be checking the javascript and robots to see if there's any reason the links aren't being counted. But if anyone else has any insight it would be most welcome

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

You need to fat check the statement that 'google rates the importance of pages by the number of internal links they have'  That's not true anymore.  The number of links hasn't been a thing for about 6 years.  It's how people are using your site.  Search console is also notorious for getting stuff wrong.

Perhaps try a crawl with Screaming Frog and you'll have more success.  Or maybe someone else can shed some light?

[Andrew-SEO]

The number of internal links you make to a page shows the level of importance you place on that page within your domain. Fact check first sentence - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/138752?hl=en

That's the lesser point here though. There's a bigger issue I need to resolve. My most important pages are the ones google perceives to have far fewer internal links and these pages are not being shown in the serps, instead the lower pages are showing.

I will progress with checking the js and robots to see if I can get this crawl sorted.