Will internal linking affect the current ranking negatively?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Moeez Bin Hamid: Hello,
  I was just looking at a website; I found on first page of google for some term. I dig in deep through moz tool to see what exactly they did. I found out all they had was internal links. No external links. Internal links with anchor texts. Like on every page they had links to all the pages they had. Website was so poorly designed and all but still it was ranked for the term I searched for.
  
  So I wanted to ask if anyone wants to do the internal linking. Will that affect the current ranking negatively? I want to do it but don't want to loose current ranking for the keywords I am ranked good for. Please suggest If I should go for internal linking or not? ;
  
  Thank You,
  Moeez
• 
  Matt Wilson: I'd be suspicious of a site ranking with no external links whatsoever unless it was a super low competition keyword. Are you sure there are no 301 redirects from other domains? 
• 
  Justin Y: I suspect it's low competition, internal linking to relevant pages is ok. If they're going overboard and just adding anchor text links to every single page from every page, that would most likely be considered spammy. 
• 
  Moeez Bin Hamid: Hi Matt and Justin,
  +Matt Wilson ; Im not that pro, dont know how to check if there was a 301 redirects but I am sure that website doesn't have 301 redirects. If they had 301 redirect then it would have shown in the links. All they had was internal links.
  +Justin Y ;Yes that is what I believe too. Maybe that is cause of low competition keyword. ;
  So for new comers; Concentrate on the low competition keywords than building spam links :) ;
• 
  Unique Websites: The SEO experts here will be able to advise you better, but once, when I tried increasing the keyword density of an existing ;site just slightly, Google dropped it like a bomb - I removed the keywords and it resurfaced.
  
  As I had NOT increased the keywords to a spammy level, I assumed that it was just that their algos worked out that the changes I had made were to keyword density - rather than to content as a whole.
  
  I cannot say that changing all of your internal links to be anchor text will cause problems, but my experience leads me to suspect that it might?
• 
  Justin Y: +Moeez Bin Hamid
  I think sprinkling anchor text links within a well written article works best. Through experience, I've learned that writing for your readers and worrying less about the keywords and the density is more effective. It's more natural to write and the add links where it's appropriate.
  
  Search: "Page One Defense SEO" and you'll see my post to get an idea and to see how I structure my content for reference. 
  
  Btw my article has one backlink .
• 
  Adegboye Adeniyi: I had the same issue with a keyword I am trying to rank for. I wanted to follow suit just to beat the competition but i just decided to follow proper guideline and let Google catch up with them whenever they ready. Beside I am on the fourth position for the keyword so maybe that is why i am not too bothered.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 01:14:23 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/will_internal_linking_affect_the_current_ranking_negatively