The link graph, mapped · free · no account

Internal link audit

An internal link audit maps how your pages link to each other, because links are how crawlers find your content. Google's documentation is specific: "Generally, Google can only crawl your link if it's an <a> HTML element (also known as anchor element) with an href attribute." We crawl your site, up to 150 pages free, and flag orphan pages, broken links, crawl dead ends and anchor text that wastes its signal.

A page that no other page links to is, from Google's perspective, barely there. A site where every link says "click here" passes no topical signal at all. We map the graph and tell you exactly where the structure breaks down.

Free Visibility Scan: whole site, up to 150 pages, no email. Full Report is a one-time $10.

What it means

Links are discovery and authority, in one mechanism.

Every link from one of your pages to another is a signal to Google: this page exists, this is what it is about, and I consider it relevant enough to mention. Pages that receive no internal links (orphans) are hard for crawlers to find and easy for Google to deprioritize. Pages that receive many contextual links from topically related content accumulate authority.

Anchor text is the text of the link itself. "Click here" tells Google nothing about the destination. "Internal link audit guide" tells Google the linked page is about internal link audits. On a site with hundreds of generic anchors, the opportunity to pass topical signal is being wasted on every link.

The most common failures: orphan pages that crawlers may miss entirely; pages with zero outbound internal links that become crawl dead ends; a low average link count that leaves the site underconnected; generic anchor text; broken internal links that return 404s or redirect loops; and pages buried four or more clicks from the homepage. Fix guide: fixing missing internal links.

What we check

The site-wide picture, not one page at a time.

Link structure

The shape of the graph

  • The full internal link graph, crawled and mapped; orphan pages detected and named by URL
  • Average internal links per page across the crawled site
  • Link depth: how many clicks each page is from the homepage; pages deeper than three clicks are harder for crawlers to reach reliably
Link health

What is broken

  • Every outbound link, internal and external, checked for 404s, server errors and redirect loops, named by source page and destination
  • Crawl dead ends: pages with no links out at all
Anchor text

What the links say

  • The proportion of internal links using generic anchors ("click here", "read more", "learn more"), which pass no topical signal to engines or to readers using assistive technology
  • Images used as links checked for alt text; a linked image with no alt is a blind anchor
Related structure issues

Split equity

  • Duplicate page titles, which often indicate duplicate pages that should be consolidated rather than linked separately. See fixing title tags
  • Near-duplicate pages flagged as split link-equity targets. See fixing duplicate content

The free scan covers your whole site, up to 150 pages: orphan count with URLs named, average links per page, generic-anchor percentage with examples, every broken link, and the link depth distribution, ranked by impact on crawl coverage and topic signal. Related: the technical SEO audit, fixing sitemap errors, and the AI search optimization hub (orphaned pages are especially invisible to AI crawlers).

Questions

Straight answers.

What is an orphan page?

An orphan page is a page on your site that no other page on your site links to. It can exist in your sitemap and still be orphaned from the internal link graph. Crawlers may find it via the sitemap but deprioritize it because nothing on the site points to it. AI crawlers that do not process sitemaps may not find it at all.

How many internal links per page is enough?

There is no documented minimum. What we check is whether pages are connected (no orphans) and whether the site is underlinked on average. A news site and a three-page brochure site have different right answers. We flag when orphans exist or when the average is low enough that the structure is clearly weak.

Does anchor text still matter for SEO?

Yes. Descriptive anchor text is documented Google guidance. Generic anchors like "click here" pass no topical signal. On a site with many generic anchors, every internal link is a missed chance to reinforce what the destination page covers. It also matters for accessibility: screen reader users navigate by links, and "click here" gives them nothing.

What is link depth and why does it matter?

Link depth is how many clicks a page is from the homepage. Pages at depth one are crawled most reliably. Pages at depth four or beyond may be crawled infrequently, which means their content updates are slower to reach the index.

Do broken internal links hurt SEO?

A broken internal link wastes a crawl request and delivers nothing to the crawler. If the broken link was the only link to a page, that page is now effectively orphaned. We name every broken link and the page it comes from so you can fix or remove them. The $10 Full Report packages the whole list into a prioritized action plan.

See where your link structure breaks down.

Free crawl of your whole site, up to 150 pages. Orphans named, broken links listed. No email.

164 graded checks · the link graph mapped · not a score, a diagnosis