Internal Link Audit
Internal linking decides which pages get crawled, which get indexed and which get authority. This audit reports the three structural problems that quietly cap a site's performance.
How this tool works
An internal link audit is a crawl of your own site that reports what a crawler would find: the pages nothing links to, the pages that are linked to from everywhere, the broken links, and the depth at which each page can be reached from the home page. It is the most direct way to find out what a search engine can actually reach.This audit works from a link graph, which is a list of pages and the links between them, and it reports the orphans, the weakly linked pages, the depth distribution and the pages with the most inbound links. The number that most often reveals a problem is the depth: a page five clicks from the home page is found far less often than a page two clicks away, and if the pages you most want indexed are the deep ones, that is worth fixing before anything else.
When to use it
- Find pages that nothing links to
- Check how deep into the site each page sits
- Find broken internal links
- See which pages carry the most inbound links
Frequently asked questions
What is an orphan page?
One with no inbound internal links. It may still be in the sitemap, but a page nothing links to is hard for a crawler to reach and hard for a reader to find.
What is a good click depth?
Three clicks from the home page is generally the practical limit. Anything deeper needs links from somewhere.
Is a weak page a problem?
A page with one inbound link is reachable, but it is not reinforced. Linking to it from relevant, contextual places rather than only from the footer makes a real difference.
How do I fix a page that is too deep?
Link to it from the pages that are already one click away and that are topically related, rather than adding a link to the footer.
Should every page be in the sitemap?
Yes, if it is indexable. A sitemap is a discovery hint, and it is not a substitute for links.
Does this tool crawl the live site?
No, it works on a link graph you supply, which means it can be run against a staging copy or a local build without hitting the live site at all.