This translation has not been editorially reviewed yet. The German version is authoritative. Deutsche Fassung →
Checking internal linking: how pages carry each other
Internal links determine which pages get found at all, and how important they appear relative to each other. The check verifies whether a page has meaningful internal links — a page nothing points to barely exists for search engines.
- The typical case is the orphaned subpage: it's in the sitemap, but no menu and no text points to it. At best, it then gets visited occasionally, and practically never ranks well.
- The second typical case is the opposite: every page links to every other page via a giant menu. Then no link carries any signal any more about what's important.
- Links within body text with anchor text that names the destination are useful. They tell the reader and the search engine at the same time what to expect there.
FAQ
How many internal links should a page have?
There's no meaningful target number. What matters is that every important page is reachable from a topically relevant spot — and that no link exists just to pad out the count.
What is an orphaned page?
A page that no other page on the website links to. It's usually only findable via the sitemap, and gets visited correspondingly rarely.