Fewer internal links beat more in three specific cases: when extra links dilute the value each one passes, when they bury the links that actually matter, and when they pile up into a sitewide pattern that reads as boilerplate rather than editorial choice. In each of those, a focused handful of deliberate links guides both readers and equity better than a flood. The pivot is link-focus versus link-flood, not a belief that adding links is always an improvement.
The dilution case is the most direct. A page passes a finite amount of attention and equity through its links, so when you split that across thirty destinations instead of five, each receiving link gets a thinner slice. If only a few of those destinations genuinely deserve the signal, the extra links are quietly stealing from the ones that matter. Cutting back concentrates the value where you want it to land.
The burial case is about the reader and the crawler both. When a paragraph carries six links, the one destination you most want followed is lost in the crowd, and the same crowding makes it harder for search engines to read which connection you are emphasizing. A single well-placed link in a relevant sentence carries more weight than the same link wedged among five others. The pattern case is subtler: links injected sitewide by template, repeated in every footer or sidebar regardless of relevance, build a footprint that looks mechanical rather than chosen, and that mechanical sameness adds little while costing focus. Fewer wins precisely when each remaining link is more deliberate than the many it replaces.
When you next review a page, ask of each internal link whether a reader on this exact page would want that destination and whether the connection is real. Cut the links that fail that test, especially the templated and the redundant ones, so the links you keep concentrate value instead of scattering it. A short list of deliberate links will outperform a long list of reflexive ones.