Free SEO Tool
Internal Link Checker
See every internal link on a page, with its anchor text, follow status and live status code. Finds the broken destinations and the anchors that describe nothing.
How this internal links checker works
Three steps, and the URL is all you need:
Paste a page URL
One page. This reads the links on the URL you give it rather than crawling your whole site, so it is instant and needs no account.
We read every link
Internal and external links are separated, anchor text is extracted including the alt text of image links, and each unique internal destination is requested to get its live status.
Filter to the problems
Switch the list to problems only and you get broken destinations, empty anchors and generic anchors, which is the part worth acting on.
What this internal link checker tool reports
Listing links is the easy part. The useful part is which of them are broken, and which say nothing about where they lead.
Broken internal links
Links pointing at your own pages that no longer resolve. Unlike a broken external link this is entirely yours to fix, and it is the single most useful thing in the report.
Anchor text on every link
The words carrying each link, which is the strongest signal you give about what the destination covers. Image links are read through their alt text rather than reported as empty.
Follow and nofollow
Nofollow on an internal link stops authority reaching your own page, which is almost never deliberate. It usually arrives via a plugin or a template.
Generic anchors
Anchors like click here and read more describe nothing. They are also harder for screen reader users, who often navigate by jumping between links out of context.
Ambiguous anchor text
The same words pointing at different pages. That is confusing for readers and gives search engines contradictory signals about which page the phrase describes.
Unique against total
Forty links to the same page is one relationship repeated. The unique count is usually the more honest number, and it is the one status checks run against.
Internal linking rules that actually matter
Six of them, and none involve hitting a link count.
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Link from content, not just navigation | Editorial links inside the body carry more weight than a repeated footer link |
| Describe the destination in the anchor | Use the words someone would search for, not click here |
| Vary anchors naturally | The same page reached through several phrasings is normal and fine |
| Do not nofollow your own pages | Sculpting authority this way stopped working in 2009 |
| Point at the final URL | A link into a redirect chain costs a hop for no reason |
| Keep important pages within a few clicks of the homepage | Depth is a rough proxy for how often a page gets crawled |
Common internal linking mistakes
Most of these are invisible on the page itself, which is why they survive for years.
- 1Orphan pages nothing links to. A page reachable only through the sitemap gets crawled rarely and ranks poorly. If this tool reports zero internal links on a page, that page is a dead end, and that is the most serious result the report can return.
- 2Every anchor being the exact target keyword. Internal anchors are safer to optimise than external ones, but a page where every inbound link uses the identical phrase looks engineered. Vary them the way a person writing naturally would.
- 3Linking into redirects. Internal links should point at the final destination. Linking to an old URL that redirects wastes a hop on every crawl and every visit, and it accumulates quietly after a site migration.
- 4Treating navigation as an internal linking strategy. A header and footer link the same pages from everywhere, which tells search engines nothing about which pages relate to which. Contextual links inside content are what actually describe relationships.
- 5Image links with no alt text. An image link with no alt is a link with no anchor text. The link still passes authority, but it says nothing about the destination. Adding alt text costs one attribute.
- 6Adding links for the sake of a number. There is no target count. Links added because a checklist demanded them tend to be generic, buried and unclicked, which helps nobody.
Where an internal linking tool fits
This is a page-level check, not a site crawl. It reads the one URL you give it and lists what that page links to. For the opposite view, which pages link to a given page, Google Search Console's Internal Links report is the right instrument and it is free.
Treat an seo internal link checker as a per-page instrument. Run it on the pages you care about most, the ones you are actively trying to rank, rather than trying to audit an entire site one URL at a time.
If the report shows links pointing at redirects, the Redirect Checker traces where each one ends up so you can point the link there directly. To see whether the pages you link to are actually discoverable, the XML Sitemap Checker cross-checks them against robots.txt. And for everything else on the page, the On-Page SEO Checker audits headings, keyword usage and metadata against a target keyword.
Internal link checker FAQ
How to check internal linking?
Paste a page URL into the checker above. It lists every internal link on that page with its anchor text, whether it is follow or nofollow, and the live status code of the destination. Switch the list to problems only to see broken links, empty anchors and generic anchors together.
How can I find the internal links on my website?
Page by page with the tool above, which needs no account and works on any public URL. For a whole site at once you need a crawler such as Screaming Frog or a paid site audit tool, since that means fetching every page rather than one. For a specific page, this is faster.
How to track internal links?
Google Search Console has an Internal Links report under Links, which shows how many internal links point at each of your pages across the whole site. It is the best free source for the site-wide view. Use this tool for the opposite direction: which pages a single page links out to, and whether those links work.
What does "internal linking" mean?
Linking from one page on your site to another page on the same site. A link to a different domain is an external link, and a link from another site to yours is a backlink. Internal links are the only one of the three you control completely.
How to create an internal link?
In HTML, an anchor tag pointing at a path on your own site: <a href="/your-page">descriptive anchor text</a>. In a CMS, select the words you want to link and paste the destination URL. The part that matters is the words you choose, since they describe the destination to both readers and search engines.
Does internal linking help SEO?
Yes, in three distinct ways. It helps crawlers discover pages, it passes authority from stronger pages to weaker ones, and the anchor text tells search engines what the destination is about. It is also one of the few SEO levers that is entirely within your control and costs nothing.
Do internal links improve SEO?
They do, though not as a volume game. Adding links for the sake of a count achieves little. What moves the needle is linking from relevant, already-performing pages to pages you want to lift, using anchor text that describes the destination honestly.
Are internal links important for SEO?
Important enough that a page nothing links to will usually struggle no matter how good it is. Search engines follow links to find and judge pages, so a page outside the link graph is close to invisible. That is why the report flags a page with no internal links as an error rather than a warning.
How many internal links are too many for SEO?
There is no fixed limit. Google's old guidance of roughly 100 links per page was dropped long ago, and large sites routinely exceed it with navigation alone. The practical limit is attention: the more links a page carries, the less any one of them stands out. This tool notes when a page passes 150, as an observation rather than a fault.
What is the difference between backlinks and internal links?
An internal link goes from one of your pages to another of your pages. A backlink comes from someone else's site to yours. Internal links you control entirely and can fix this afternoon. Backlinks have to be earned, which is why they carry more weight but are far harder to influence. Our Backlink Checker covers the second.
What type of links are best for SEO?
For internal linking, editorial links inside the body of a page, using anchor text that describes the destination, pointing at the final URL rather than a redirect. Navigation links matter too, but because they repeat on every page they say little about which pages relate to which.
What is the best strategy for determining the internal linking structure of a website?
Group content by topic, give each group a main page covering the subject broadly, and link between that page and the detailed pages in both directions. Keep anything important within a few clicks of the homepage. Then check pages individually, since the structure you designed and the links that actually exist are rarely identical.
How to find hidden links in a website?
This tool lists every link in the HTML, including ones not visible on the rendered page such as links hidden with CSS or sitting inside collapsed menus. One limitation worth knowing: links added by JavaScript after the page loads do not appear in the HTML we fetch, so they are not counted here and search engines may also treat them differently.
How to find where a link is from?
For a link on a page you are looking at, the report above shows both the anchor text and the destination. For finding which pages link to a given page of yours, the Internal Links report in Google Search Console is the right tool, since that requires knowledge of your whole site.
What is a link checker used for?
Finding links that no longer work, before your visitors do. A broken internal link wastes crawl budget, sends readers to an error page, and usually appears silently after a page is renamed or deleted. Nothing on the linking page looks wrong, which is exactly why these survive so long.
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