The SEO Colonies strategy turns one ranking page into dozens by passing its accumulated authority through internal links to new pages targeting easy keywords. Coined by Edward Sturm, it borrows its picture from real-time strategy games: each page that ranks becomes a colony, and a colony can send "troops" - authority - to capture new territory. Do it in sequence and a single ranking page seeds an entire map of them.
It is one of the cleanest answers to a hard question: how do you rank new pages when you have no budget for backlinks. The answer is that you already have authority sitting in the pages that rank - you just have to move it.
Where authority comes from
Two sources feed a page's authority. The first is the obvious one: backlinks from other websites. The second is the one most people miss: rankings plus satisfied clicks. When a page ranks and the people who land on it do not bounce straight back to Google - no pogo-sticking - that satisfaction is itself a signal that compounds the page's standing over time.
The Colonies strategy exploits the fact that this authority is not stuck where it lands. Internal links move it. A link from Page A to Page B passes some of Page A's authority to Page B - and the page you link from matters as much as the page you link to.
The strategy, step by step
Phase 1 - establish the first colony. Get one page ranking and load it with authority. For most sites this is the homepage, ranking for the brand name, reinforced with whatever backlinks you can earn. This is your home base.
Phase 2 - deploy authority outward. Link from that established page to a new page targeting an uncompetitive keyword. In Sturm's words: "You take Page A and you link to Page B. Page A passes some of its authority, like one colony passing troops to a colony it is trying to take over." Because the new keyword is easy, that borrowed authority is often enough to push the page onto the first page of results.
Phase 3 - multiply. Once Page B ranks and starts earning its own satisfied clicks, it becomes an authority source in its own right. Now you can redirect your internal links to Page C - "like redirecting troops from Page B to Page C" - and repeat. Each captured colony funds the next. One page becomes three, three become a dozen.
The two rules that make it work
Target easy keywords. Colonies only fall cheaply when they are lightly defended. Aim the strategy at uncompetitive terms your competitors ignore, not head terms guarded by big sites. This is exactly where compact keywords fit - short, specific, low-competition, buyer-intent phrases are the ideal targets for new colonies, because a modest authority transfer is enough to rank them and the traffic actually converts.
Never leave an orphan. An orphan page is a page with zero internal links pointing to it. It is a colony cut off from supply - no authority reaches it, so it struggles to rank no matter how good the content is. Every page you publish should receive at least one internal link from a page that already ranks. If it does not, it is on its own.
Why it matters more in the AI era
The Colonies strategy was built for Google, but it pays off twice now. The pages it helps rank - specific, answer-first, on easy keywords - are exactly the pages large language models read and quote when someone asks a buying question. A page that ranks in Google is far more likely to be the source ChatGPT cites. So every colony you capture is not just a Google position; it is another page in the pool an AI draws from when it decides who to recommend.
How to start
You do not need a big site to begin. You need one page that ranks - even your homepage on your brand name - and a short list of easy keywords worth owning. Link out from the ranking page to the first new one, publish, wait for it to rank, then move your links to the next. The compounding is slow at first and then suddenly not, which is exactly how colonies grow.
If you would rather have the keyword research, the pages and the internal-link map built for you, that is the work behind our done-for-you Compact Keywords service and the AI Visibility Sprint - the same strategy, run by people who use it on their own site first.