The Welcoming Clutter: On the Deliberate Noise of the Unpruned Link
There is a mantra in our field, repeated with the solemnity of a sacred text: prune your internal links. The advice is to be a ruthless gardener, cutting away the deadwood, ensuring every path is intentional, clean, and serves a direct purpose. We are told that a lean, purposeful link structure is the hallmark of a professional site. But I want to propose a heresy. What if, sometimes, the most human and useful thing we can build is not a pruned garden, but a slightly overgrown path? What if a little deliberate link clutter is not a failure of structure, but a feature of discovery?
Consider the physical spaces we cherish most. The used bookstore where you find a volume on astrophysics nestled unexpectedly in the poetry section. The old hardware store where a conversation at the counter about nails leads you to a perfect, obscure tool you never knew existed. These places are not optimized for efficiency. They are optimized for serendipity. Their value lies in their delightful, human messiness—the connections that aren't logical, only meaningful. Our obsession with pruning every link is an attempt to turn the web into a sterile supermarket when sometimes our users crave a bustling market.
This isn’t an argument for chaos. It’s an argument for intentional generosity. A ‘Related Posts’ widget that isn’t just algorithmically perfect but also includes a tangentially linked, older article from a different category. A footer link that doesn’t just point to a legal disclaimer, but also to the passionate, slightly off-topic blog post that started it all. These are the digital equivalent of a footnote that sends you down a rabbit hole, a whispered “while you’re here…” from the page itself.
The Architecture of Accident
This approach champions what I call the ‘Architecture of Accident.’ It deliberately designs for the happy coincidence. It understands that a user’s journey is rarely a straight line from A to B, but often a meandering walk where the destination is discovered, not pre-ordained. By leaving in—or even adding—these seemingly superfluous connections, we acknowledge that the value of a website isn't just in the specific content a user seeks, but in the context that surrounds it.
The counterintuitive truth is that this clutter can increase engagement and depth of visit. It gives users a reason to linger, to explore, to feel like they are uncovering the layers of a thought rather than consuming a packaged product. It builds a sense of place. A site with every irrelevant link pruned feels transactional. A site with a few thoughtful, unexpected paths feels lived-in. It feels like a conversation.
So, before you wield your pruning shears on that internal linking report, take a moment. Look for the connections that are human, not just logical. Leave a little welcoming clutter. Build a web that isn’t just a map of your intent, but a landscape for our curiosity.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: