So I have my homepage, then from my homepage I link to all my category pages, then from each category page, I link to each of my product pages. Each product page links back to the homepage + category page. Should I have each product page also link directly to other product pages within that category? It would really increase the amount of internal links pointing to each product page. Or would it confuse the search engines?
I think the way you are doing it is nice. You can show other related products from each product pages.
Too much interlinking is not necessary and yahoo gives more importance to the interlinking pattern than google, imo. To get better PR for inner pages, get backlinks with high PR for them. Concentrate more on the quality of the contents and you will get more voluntary backlinks...
"Should I have each product page also link directly to other product pages within that category?" I think you don't do that, as products will increase, even if they don't increase, you do not need to inter link between them. As "dairyman" said, concentrate more on backlinks.
I disagree with the above comments that say it is not necessary to interlink the products. It is worth doing for the Yahoo benefits alone. I don't get people who voluntarily decide to not optimize for Yahoo. Are they too busy to go after 10% of the search market? The other benefit is that you have good cross selling setup when you do this.
Hi, What you're doing is more than enough. Please try to link the related products only not to optimize for search engine but for getting useful visitors...