Quantity of Internal Followed Links

[ctam]

We compared our and competitor pages.

And we have got next statistics:

Internal Followed Links:     184     4,496

We are thinking about changing our shopping cart links format from

/product_info.php?products_id=3547 to /product_name.html

This should increase "number of our pages" and "number of links" from them.
But in case a description of products from the same category often is very similar. We worry about duplicating page content.

Could you give any advice in that situation? Do Internal Links play a big role in page rank?

Thanks.

PS: at attached image you can find full page metrics from open site explorer. Our metrics are at left, competitors - right.

BtTap.jpg

[AlanMosley]

There s a lot yopu can do with internal links including giving relevance to a page and pushing your PR aound the site. you can not increase the sites PR by internal linking, but you can make some pages rank higher at the exspence of others.

http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/tutorials/a-simple-explanation-of-pagerank

[ResslerMotors]

Just like external links are little votes from outside sources of what is an important article on your website, internal links are your little voting system.  It's your way of telling Google/Bing what your page is about, and how important it is.  So, you are going to want more internal links pointing at your important (money making) pages than something like a disclaimer.

However, you have to put these internal links in perspective of your other pages.  If one of your pages has 2000 links, and then next highest is 20, you should look at balancing it out a little.