Free Internal Link Checker

An internal link is a hyperlink that points to another page on the same domain. Links from /blog/seo-guide to /blog/meta-tags are internal. Links to external sites like wikipedia.org are outbound. Internal links help search engines discover and understand your site structure, distribute link equity (PageRank) across pages, and guide users to related content. Every well-structured site has a thoughtful internal linking strategy.

Internal linking does three critical jobs. First, it signals relevance; linking from a high-authority page to a newer one passes link equity and helps the target rank. Second, it establishes site hierarchy, Google uses internal links to understand which pages are most important. Third, it improves crawlability, pages with no inbound internal links (orphans) can take weeks to get indexed, while well-linked pages get crawled frequently. Strong internal linking is one of the highest-ROI SEO investments because it's entirely under your control.

Link depth is the number of clicks it takes to reach a page from the homepage. Homepage is depth 0, top-level pages are depth 1, etc. Google's crawlers prioritize shallow pages, anything beyond 4 clicks deep gets crawled less often and ranks harder. Rule of thumb: every important page should be reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage. This tool reports path-segment depth (count of / in the URL), which correlates with but isn't identical to click depth. Use it as a proxy alongside manual navigation testing.

An orphan page has zero incoming internal links from other pages on your site. Search engines can't discover orphan pages through crawling, they only find them via sitemaps or external links. Orphans often include old landing pages, abandoned blog drafts, category pages that got depublished, and A/B test variants left live. Orphan auditing requires a full-site crawl (outside this single-page tool's scope). Use Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs Site Audit for that. This tool audits the internal linking ON a given page, which is half the diagnostic: if a page has few outgoing internal links, other pages are likely orphaning it.

There's no strict limit, but healthy pages typically have 30-150 internal links spread across navigation, footer, sidebars, and body content. Pages with fewer than 10 internal links often under-contribute to site structure. Pages with 200+ internal links dilute link equity across too many targets. Blog posts and guide pages should include 3-8 contextual body links to related content, this is the highest-ROI internal linking placement for SEO.

Follow the pyramid principle: homepage → category pages → sub-category → individual content pages. Homepage (depth 0) links to ~10 top-level category pages (depth 1), each category links to ~10-20 sub-categories (depth 2), and those link to individual content (depth 3). Every page gets at least one inbound link from a pages above it in the hierarchy plus contextual links from peer pages. Critical pages (pricing, top guides, conversion pages) should get inbound links from every major category to concentrate equity.

Usually no. Nofollowed internal links waste link equity, you're telling Google not to pass PageRank through links you control, which makes no sense for editorial navigation. Valid exceptions: (1) login/register/account pages that shouldn't rank anyway, (2) search result pages (infinite variation), (3) admin/dashboard routes. Don't nofollow blog links, pricing, product pages, or anything that should rank. This tool flags every nofollowed internal link so you can verify each one has a real reason.

Duplicates (same URL linked 2+ times from one page) waste anchor text opportunity. If you link to /pricing 5 times on a homepage, only the first anchor counts for Google's ranking signal to /pricing. Consolidate: keep one contextual body link with the best anchor text, remove or change the others. Also check nav/footer duplication, if a link appears in both, that's fine, but if it repeats within the body too, that's a cleanup target. This tool reports every URL linked 2+ times with all the anchors used.

Descriptive keyword-rich anchors that describe the destination. "Pricing and plans" is better than "pricing page" which is better than "click here". Internal anchors can be more keyword-focused than external ones, you control both ends of the link, and Google understands editorial context. That said, don't over-optimize: if 10 different internal pages link to /pricing with the exact phrase "best crm pricing", that pattern looks manipulative. Mix keyword anchors, brand mentions, and natural descriptions. Audit internal anchor distribution with our Anchor Text Analyzer.

No, this is a single-page audit tool. To find orphans, you need a full-site crawler that scans every page and maps the link graph. Tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Sitebulb, Ahrefs Site Audit, and Semrush Site Audit do full-site crawls and orphan detection. This tool complements those, once you identify a page, paste it here to audit its outgoing internal links. Pages with few outgoing internals are probably not linking well TO other pages either, which creates more orphans downstream.

Link Extractor shows every link on a page (internal, external, mailto, tel, anchor) without interpretation. Internal Link Checker focuses specifically on internal links with SEO-focused analysis: path depth, duplicate target detection, nofollow audits, anchor text diversity, and deep-link flags. Use Link Extractor when you want a raw export of all links. Use this tool when you're auditing internal SEO structure and need specific metrics Google cares about.

No. The source URL is fetched once by our stateless API route, parsed for internal links, analyzed, and the result is returned, nothing is logged or persisted on our servers. The optional history feature saves results to your browser's localStorage only. Safe to audit staging sites, unreleased pages, or client domains confidentially without worrying about our infrastructure retaining anything.