Most internal link audit guides give you a list of issues to look for. Few give you a system for working through them. This one does both: a 15-point checklist covering every meaningful internal linking problem, grouped into logical categories, plus a prioritisation framework and a repeatable workflow you can run monthly without starting from scratch each time.
The checklist works for any CMS and any site size. The tools change depending on your stack; the checks do not.
Key Takeaways
Definition
An internal link audit is a systematic review of all internal hyperlinks on a website, assessing their technical health, structural logic, topical relevance, and equity distribution. The output is a prioritised list of issues to fix and opportunities to add links that will improve crawlability, authority flow, and rankings. It is distinct from an internal linking strategy (which plans future architecture) because it diagnoses the current state.
"Internal linking is super critical for SEO. It's one of the biggest things you can do on a website."
John Mueller, Search Advocate, Google (via WhiteHat SEO UK)
Google's own documentation states that "the vast majority of new pages that Google finds every day are through links."[3] For internal links, this means every page you publish needs a link from somewhere on your site that Google already knows about, or it may not be discovered and indexed at all.
An audit reveals gaps in this discovery path: orphan pages that have no inbound links, pages buried so deep in the site that Googlebot rarely reaches them, and broken links that terminate crawl paths abruptly.
The distinction matters for scoping. An audit answers: "What is wrong with what we have?" A strategy answers: "How should we link going forward?" This checklist focuses on the audit, though some checks naturally surface opportunities that feed into strategy.
Check 1: Confirm your crawl is complete. Run a full site crawl using Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, Ahrefs Site Audit, or Semrush Site Audit. Verify that JavaScript rendering is enabled if your site uses a JS framework. Confirm the crawl reached your deepest pages by sorting results by crawl depth and checking the maximum depth discovered. A crawl that stops at depth 4 will miss pages at depth 5+.
Check 2: Export source, anchor, and target link data. Generate a full export of all internal links with three fields: source URL (the page containing the link), anchor text (the clickable text), and target URL (the destination). This is your internal link graph. Every subsequent check uses this data.
Check 3: Cross-check with Google Search Console Links report. GSC's internal links report (Links > Internal links) shows which pages Google has found and how many internal links point to each. Compare against your crawl data. Discrepancies (pages your crawl found that GSC does not show many links to) suggest crawlability issues worth investigating.
Check 4: Broken internal links (4xx). Filter your crawl data for internal links returning 4xx status codes. These are broken links. Sort by source page's organic traffic to prioritise fixes on your most important pages. Every broken internal link wastes the equity it would otherwise pass.
Check 5: Internal links to redirects (3xx). Links pointing to redirected URLs create unnecessary HTTP hops. While these do not break in the traditional sense, they dilute equity slightly and should be updated to point directly to the final destination URL. Semrush Site Audit flags these automatically.
Check 6: Redirect chains and loops. A redirect chain is a series of 3xx responses (A redirects to B, B redirects to C). Each hop loses a small amount of equity. A redirect loop (A redirects to B, B redirects to A) will block any crawl following the chain. Both require direct investigation and resolution.
Check 7: Links to non-canonical or non-indexable URLs. Links pointing to pages with a noindex meta tag or a canonical tag pointing to a different URL are sending equity to a dead end. The linked page will not rank. Update these links to point to the canonical indexable version.
Check 8: Internal nofollow usage (intentional vs accidental). Internal nofollow links do not pass equity. There are legitimate reasons to nofollow certain internal links (login pages, user-generated content areas), but many sites have accidental internal nofollows introduced by CMS plugins. Audit all internal nofollow links and confirm each one is intentional.
Check 9: Orphan pages (inlinks = 0). Filter your crawl data for pages with zero inbound internal links. These are your orphan pages. Cross-reference this list against GSC to identify orphans that have existing organic impressions or traffic, as these are the highest-priority fixes. Botify found that in sites with significant orphan page problems, those orphan pages generated only 5% of organic visits despite constituting a large share of the total page count.[2]
Check 10: Under-linked priority pages. These are not technically orphan pages (they have at least one inbound internal link), but they are receiving far fewer links than their commercial or ranking importance warrants. Build a list of your money pages (pricing, sign-up, demo, high-intent blog posts) and check their inlink counts. Any priority page with fewer than three contextual inbound links is under-served.
Check 11: Excessive click depth. Sort your crawl data by crawl depth. Flag any pages targeting commercial keywords or receiving backlinks that sit at depth 4 or deeper. Pages deeper than three clicks from the homepage receive less equity and are crawled less frequently. Add direct links from pillar pages or high-traffic content to reduce the depth of important pages.
Check 12: Over-linked pages. Pages with an excessively high number of outbound internal links dilute the equity value of each individual link. Check for pages with over 100 outbound internal links. These are often category index pages, tag archives, or footers. Evaluate whether all those links are necessary and whether any can be consolidated.
5x
More Google traffic to pages with at least one exact-match internal anchor link compared to pages without any
Source: Zyppy, 23 Million Internal Links Study
Check 13: Generic anchors. Filter your anchor text export for phrases like "click here," "read more," "here," "this article," and "learn more." Each occurrence is a missed SEO opportunity. Replace with descriptive anchor text that tells Google (and the user) what the destination page is about. The anchor should ideally include the target page's primary keyword where it reads naturally.
Check 14: Repetitive or over-optimised anchors. If the same exact keyword phrase appears as anchor text on every single internal link to a page, it can look manipulative. Check the anchor text profile for each important destination page. A natural profile has variations: the exact keyword, partial matches, brand name, and descriptive phrases. If all 20 links to your pricing page use the anchor text "best SEO tool pricing," diversify them.
Check 15: Missing cluster links. This is the opportunity check. Using your site's topic structure as a guide, identify pairs of topically related pages that should link to each other but currently do not. Every cluster post should link to its pillar page. The pillar should link to each cluster post. Cluster posts on related subtopics should cross-link. Map these missing links and add them.
5%
of organic visits go to orphan pages despite them comprising a large share of total pages on most sites
Source: Botify Orphan Pages Study
Not all 15 checks will surface equal problems. A scoring model keeps the most important work at the top of the queue.
Rank every issue using three dimensions:
A broken internal link on a page that drives £50k of pipeline per month is your top priority. A generic anchor on a page with zero GSC impressions can wait.
Use these data sources to weight your priority scores:
4x
More Google search clicks for pages with 40-44 inbound internal links compared to pages with only 0-4 internal links
Source: Zyppy, 23 Million Internal Links Study (Cyrus Shepard)
The checklist generates a list of issues. The workflow turns that list into completed fixes.
Phase 1 (Fix): Address all technical issues first. Broken links, links to redirects, redirect chains, links to noindex pages, accidental nofollows. These are the hygiene layer. They require no editorial judgement, just systematic resolution. Assign them to whoever manages your CMS and verify completion with a re-crawl.
Phase 2 (Connect): Fix orphan pages and under-linked priority pages. This requires editorial input: choosing which existing pages should link to the orphan, writing or editing the contextual paragraph containing the new link, and selecting appropriate anchor text. For each orphan page, add a minimum of two contextual inbound links from topically relevant, well-linked pages.
Phase 3 (Strengthen): Build out cluster links. Review your topic clusters, add missing bidirectional links between pillar and cluster pages, and add lateral links between cluster posts covering adjacent subtopics. This phase has the longest-lasting SEO impact but is also the most editorial effort.
After each phase, run a targeted re-crawl of the affected pages. Verify that fixed broken links now return 200 status codes. Confirm that newly linked pages now appear in the GSC internal links report. Check that no new broken links were inadvertently created during editing.
Changes to internal links typically produce measurable GSC results within two to eight weeks, sometimes faster for sites that get frequent crawls.
Monitor three things in GSC after completing each phase:
For a free stack: Google Search Console (links report, coverage, performance), Screaming Frog free (up to 500 URLs for crawl and broken link data). For a paid stack: Ahrefs Site Audit (orphan pages, UR scores, link opportunities), Semrush Site Audit (internal linking report, redirect chains, suggestion engine). For ongoing monitoring: Linki (pre-launch, automated continuous monitoring with prioritised issue alerts).
For a full guide to running the complete audit process end to end, see our how to run an internal link audit guide. For anchor text rules, see our internal linking best practices article. For fixing orphan pages specifically, see our orphan pages SEO guide.
An internal link audit is a systematic review of all internal hyperlinks on a website, assessing technical health (broken links, redirects), site structure (orphan pages, crawl depth), and relevance (anchor text, topic cluster coverage). The output is a prioritised fix list and a set of linking opportunities. It differs from a general technical SEO audit by focusing exclusively on internal linking.
Run a full site crawl with Screaming Frog, Ahrefs Site Audit, or Semrush Site Audit. Filter the results to show pages with zero inbound internal links. Cross-reference this list against your sitemap (to confirm the pages should exist) and against GSC (to identify which orphans already have backlinks or impressions that are being underserved by the lack of internal links).
Fix broken internal links first: they actively block equity flow and disrupt user journeys, and the fix is usually simple. Then connect orphan pages, starting with those that have existing backlinks or GSC impressions. Then address redirect chains and links to redirect targets. Cluster architecture strengthening (adding missing pillar-to-cluster links) comes last, as it requires the most editorial effort but has sustained long-term impact.
Run a full audit quarterly for active content sites. Run immediate targeted audits after any CMS migration, URL structure change, or significant content deletion. For the technical hygiene layer (broken links, redirects), monthly monitoring is preferable. Continuous monitoring tools like Linki remove the need for manual scheduling by alerting on new issues as they occur.
Not necessarily. Google Search Console (free) and Screaming Frog's free tier (up to 500 URLs) cover the most critical checks: broken links, orphan pages, and crawl depth. Paid tools like Ahrefs and Semrush add authority flow analysis, scheduled crawls, and linking suggestion features that significantly speed up both the diagnosis and implementation phases for larger sites.
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