The Product Graph: how related products and services help businesses get found

When people think about SEO, they often think about individual pages.

One product page. One service page. One destination page. One blog post.

But customers rarely think in isolated pages. They move through related needs.

When you are looking for a specific product, you might view similar ones, compare alternatives, check reviews, look at accessories, read FAQs, and then return to a product you saw earlier. When you are planning a trip, you might start with one destination and then discover nearby cities, airports, hotels, baggage rules, seasonal ideas, or weekend itineraries. When you need a plumber, you may not even know the exact service name. You may only know the symptom: “my sink is blocked,” “my boiler is leaking,” or “my water pressure dropped.”

This is why I think businesses should stop seeing their websites as collections of isolated pages. A better way to think about it is as a product graph or service graph.

What is a product graph?

A product graph is the network of relationships between the things a business offers.

Each product, service, category, destination, location, guide, FAQ, review, or booking page is a node. The links between them are the paths. Those paths help users and search engines understand what belongs together.

Let’s say you’re running an airline.

Your business does not only have “flights.” You may have routes, destination pages, airport pages, seasonal travel pages, baggage information, seat options, loyalty benefits, airport transfer information, and booking flows.

A weak website says: “Book a flight from A to B.”

A stronger website helps the user answer:

• Where can I go?
• When should I go?
• Which airport should I use?
• What are nearby alternatives?
• What should I know before booking?
• What add-ons or services might I need?
• What should I do once I arrive?

That second version is not just better user experience. It creates more organic entry points, more internal paths, and more chances for a visitor to move from research to action.

What Amazon and Netflix teach us about discovery

Large digital platforms have understood this for years.

Amazon’s well-known recommendation system was built around item-to-item relationships. Instead of only asking “what did this user buy?”, the system also asked “which products are similar to this product?”

The important lesson is not that every company needs Amazon-level personalization. The lesson is simpler: products become more discoverable when relationships between products are clear.

McKinsey reported in 2013 that 35% of what consumers purchased on Amazon and 75% of what they watched on Netflix came from product recommendations. Those figures should not be treated as a guaranteed benchmark for every business, but they show how commercially important related-item discovery became for large platforms.

Netflix works in a similar discovery logic. Users do not only search manually for a title. They discover content through rows, categories, recommendations, viewing behavior, and similar users. The product is not only the movie or show. The product is also the system that helps people find the next thing they are likely to watch.

Your business probably does not need a complex recommendation algorithm. But it does need to answer a practical question:

If a visitor lands on this page, what is the next useful thing they may need?

The same principle applies to smaller businesses

Product graphs are not only for Amazon, Netflix, airlines, or marketplaces.

Let’s say you’re running an online supermarket.

A product page for pasta should not live alone. It can connect to tomato sauce, olive oil, parmesan, gluten-free alternatives, family meal bundles, quick dinner recipes, delivery information, and reviews.

Let’s say you’re running a plumbing company.

A page about blocked drains can connect to emergency plumbing, leak detection, sewer inspection, bathroom plumbing, pricing FAQs, customer reviews, and the service-area page for the city where the user lives.

Let’s say you’re running a professional services firm.

A page about technical SEO audits can connect to CMS migration audits, redirect audits, analytics reviews, Core Web Vitals, data layer checks, and conversion tracking.

In each case, the business becomes easier to understand because the offers are no longer isolated.

How people discover adjacent services

People usually discover related products and services in predictable ways.

Why this matters for SEO

Search engines discover and understand pages through links. If important pages are buried, isolated, or only reachable through filters and JavaScript components, they may be harder to crawl, understand, or prioritize.

Good internal linking helps search engines and users understand which pages are important, which services belong together, which pages support a topic cluster, and which page should be the main destination for a specific intent.

This is especially important for businesses with many offers. Airlines, ecommerce stores, supermarkets, marketplaces, clinics, agencies, and service companies can have hundreds or thousands of possible pages. Without a clear structure, users and search engines can get lost.

The problem is not only having too few pages. Sometimes the problem is having many pages with unclear relationships.

Why this matters for conversion

A good product graph does not only help SEO. It also helps conversion.

Let’s say a user lands on a product page but the product is not quite right. If the page gives no alternatives, the user may leave. But if the page shows similar products, better-fit alternatives, related categories, or helpful guides, the user may continue exploring.

Baymard’s ecommerce research separates alternative product suggestions from supplementary product suggestions. Alternative products help users find similar options, while supplementary products help users discover items that go with the product they are viewing. Baymard found in 2014 that only 42% of major ecommerce sites got this right.

This distinction matters outside ecommerce too.

A service company also needs alternatives and complements. A user looking at “boiler repair” may need “emergency plumbing,” “boiler replacement,” “pricing FAQs,” or “service areas.” A business software company may need to connect product pages to integrations, use cases, pricing, comparisons, support, and onboarding.

Related products and related services reduce dead ends. They help users answer the next question before they bounce.

A practical example: an airline website

Let’s say you’re running a new airline and you want to build organic demand.

A basic site might have a homepage, a booking engine, a destination list, and a contact page.

That is not enough.

A stronger structure could include route pages, destination pages, airport pages, seasonal travel pages, use-case pages, and support pages.

The key is not to create pages for the sake of creating pages. The key is to connect real user decisions.

A practical example: a supermarket

Let’s say you’re running an online supermarket.

A customer looking at coffee might also need filters, sugar, oat milk, biscuits, reusable capsules, or breakfast bundles. A customer looking at pasta might need sauce, cheese, olive oil, vegetables, or a recipe for a quick dinner.

The relationship types are different:

• Substitutes
• Complements
• Bundles
• Recipes
• Dietary alternatives
• Same-brand products
• Reviews
• Delivery windows

This is not only merchandising. It is organic growth architecture. Every useful relationship creates another path for discovery.

A practical example: a plumbing company

Let’s say you’re running a plumbing company with many services.

The business owner may think: “We already have a plumbing services page.”

But customers do not always search that way.

Some search by problem:

• Blocked sink
• Toilet not flushing
• Low water pressure
• Boiler leaking
• Bad smell from drain

Some search by urgency:

• Emergency plumber near me
• 24 hour plumber
• Same day leak repair

Some search by location:

• Plumber in Chelsea
• Boiler repair in Amsterdam
• Drain cleaning in Barcelona

If the website only has one generic page, it may not match these different intents. A better service graph connects symptoms, services, locations, FAQs, reviews, and booking actions.

What businesses often get wrong

The common mistake is creating pages without designing the relationships between them.

• Important pages are too deep in the site.
• Related services are not linked together.
• Users land on a page and hit a dead end.
• Blog content does not link to commercial pages.
• Product pages show random recommendations instead of useful ones.
• Service pages do not connect symptoms, locations, proof, and next steps.
• Search engines cannot easily understand which pages are central.

This is why “more content” alone is not enough. More pages can create more confusion if the relationships are not clear.

Why this is difficult to do alone

Business owners often understand their services too well.

That sounds like an advantage, but it can become a problem. When you are close to the business, everything feels obvious. You know which services belong together. You know which product is the upgrade. You know which page is important. You know what customers usually ask before buying.

But the website may not show any of that clearly.

An external perspective helps because it looks at the business the way a new customer or search engine might see it.

• Can I understand what this business offers in a few seconds?
• Can I find the next logical service?
• Can I compare alternatives?
• Can I see proof?
• Can I take action?
• Can Google crawl and understand the important pages?

That gap between internal knowledge and external clarity is where many organic growth opportunities are hidden.

How to measure whether related pages are working

A product graph or service graph should not be judged only by how elegant it looks. It should be measured.

Limitations: when related links become noise

Related products and service links are not automatically useful.

They can become noise when they are generic, excessive, irrelevant, or placed only for SEO.

A user looking for emergency plumbing does not need ten random blog posts before seeing how to call or book. A customer looking at a premium product may not need a carousel of unrelated cheap products. A traveler looking for baggage rules probably needs clarity, not destination inspiration.

The relationship must match the intent.

Good related links feel like help. Bad related links feel like clutter.

Strong recommendations for businesses

The practical answer is not to add random links everywhere. That usually creates clutter.

The stronger approach is to organize the business offering into a clear system.

1. Map your core offers before touching the website

List your main products, services, categories, locations, guides, FAQs, proof pages, and conversion pages. This gives you the full inventory of what the business already has.

2. Identify how each page should relate to the next

Which pages are alternatives? Which ones are complements? Which ones are next steps? Which ones are location-specific? Which ones support trust? Which ones answer the questions people ask before buying?

3. Connect informational pages to commercial pages

A guide should not sit alone. A FAQ should not sit alone. A blog post should not sit alone. If the content helps someone understand a problem, it should also help them find the relevant service, product, or next action.

4. Use descriptive internal links

Avoid vague links like “click here” when the user could instead see “compare emergency plumbing services,” “review baggage rules before booking,” or “see related technical SEO audit services.”

5. Measure the journey, not only the ranking

Look at internal clicks, assisted conversions, related-page journeys, long-tail landing pages, Search Console impressions, indexation, and exits from isolated pages.

This is how internal linking becomes a business system instead of an SEO checklist.

How I can help

I help businesses organize their website offers so users and search engines can understand them more clearly.

That can include auditing service relationships, internal linking, destination or location structures, product-page relationships, FAQ architecture, analytics paths, and conversion journeys.

The goal is not to create a bigger website for the sake of it.

The goal is to create a clearer system: clearer pages, clearer relationships, clearer user journeys, clearer measurement, and clearer paths from organic discovery to qualified demand.

A business may already have the expertise, services, products, and customer knowledge. The opportunity is often organizing those assets into a structure that makes sense to people who are discovering the business for the first time.

If your website has many services, products, locations, or content pages, I can help you identify where users and search engines may be getting stuck and turn that into a practical roadmap for better organic discovery and conversion.

Sources and further reading

• Google Search Central: Make your links crawlable
• Amazon Science: The history of Amazon’s recommendation algorithm
• Amazon.com Recommendations: Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering
• McKinsey: How retailers can keep up with consumers
• Netflix Research: Recommendations
• Baymard Institute: Product page suggestions