Internal linking is the most underrated SEO lever
Internal links pass PageRank between your pages, signal topical relationships to Google, and help users navigate. A page with no internal links pointing to it is essentially invisible to crawlers; even if it is in your sitemap, Google deprioritizes pages with no internal authority flow.
This analyzer extracts every internal link from a page, examines the anchor text, rel attributes, and nofollow status. It does not crawl the rest of the site (use the full DarnItSEO Audit for that), but it gives a clear picture of how one page is linked from itself outward.
What good internal linking looks like
Pillar pages should link to relevant cluster pages with descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text. Cluster pages should link back to the pillar. Both should link to closely related sibling content. The result is a hub-and-spoke topology that concentrates authority on the most important pages while still distributing it.
Avoid linking everything to your homepage 100 times. Avoid creating "link farms" where every page links to every other page. Both signal manipulation rather than genuine semantic organization.
Anchor text matters in internal linking
For internal links, exact-match anchor text is fine and even helpful. Unlike external links where exact-match anchors look like manipulation, internal links with descriptive anchors are a feature. "How robots.txt works" is better than "click here" when linking to your robots.txt explainer.
Empty anchors (anchor text that is missing or just whitespace) are a problem. Screen readers announce "link" with no description. Search engines have no context for what the link targets. The analyzer flags these explicitly.
Nofollow on internal links is almost always wrong
Nofollow on internal links blocks PageRank flow within your own site. The only legitimate uses: links to login pages, sign-up forms, or admin pages you do not want crawled. Sometimes also for affiliate-disclosure-required outbound links, but those are not internal.
If the analyzer reports nofollow internal links, audit them. Most are accidental (a CMS template or plugin adding nofollow to specific link types) and removing them recovers crawl signal immediately.
Common internal linking mistakes
Orphan pages: pages with no internal links at all. Identify with a full site crawl, then add at least 2 to 3 inbound internal links from related content. Without internal links, a page rarely ranks.
Excessive boilerplate links. Footer mega-menus with 80+ links on every page dilute link equity. Sidebar widgets with sitewide cross-links to "related categories" do the same. Less is more.
Linking deep pages from low-authority pages only. Important pages need links from your homepage, top-level navigation, and high-authority pillars. Pages buried at depth 5+ struggle to rank.
How to use this analysis
Start with anchor text quality. Replace "click here" and "read more" with descriptive anchors. Then check for empty anchors and fix them. Then verify there are no unintended nofollows. Finally, look at the link list for orphan opportunities: are there pages on your site that should be linked from this page but are not?