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Internal Link Auditor

Audit the links on a page, including the anchors that describe nothing.

What you provide

Used to work out which absolute links are internal. Optional, but the counts are more accurate with it.

How this calculation works

Every anchor in the markup is pulled out with its href, its rel attribute and its visible text. Links are sorted into internal and external using the page URL you supply, relative paths always counting as internal. Anchors are then checked for two specific weaknesses: empty text, which gives a reader nothing, and generic text such as "click here", which spends a strong signal about the destination on a phrase that describes nothing at all.

What the results mean

Unique internal targets
Distinct pages this one points at, ignoring fragments. Several links to the same target count once, which is closer to how the link is actually valued.
Generic anchor text
Links whose text is "click here", "read more" or similar. Worth rewriting for search and for anyone navigating by pulling up a list of the page links.
Marked nofollow
Links carrying a nofollow rel. Normal on user-submitted and paid links, and usually a mistake on your own internal navigation.

Common problems and fixes

No links are found in markup that clearly has them
You have probably pasted the server response for a page whose navigation is rendered by script. Copy the outer HTML from the browser inspector instead. It is also worth knowing whether crawlers see the same empty version, since links that only exist after script runs are discovered far less reliably.
Internal links are being counted as external
Add the page URL, or check that it matches the scheme and host of the links. A page served over https that links to itself over http produces a different origin, so those links are counted as external. That mismatch is worth fixing regardless of what this tool reports, since it costs a redirect on every click.

Frequently asked questions

How many internal links should a page have?

Enough to point at the pages a reader would genuinely want next, which for most pages is a handful in the content plus the site navigation. There is no magic number and no penalty for having many, though a page with hundreds of links spreads whatever value it passes very thinly.

What makes good anchor text?

A short description of what is on the other end, in the words a person would use. "Subnet mask reference table" tells both a reader and a search engine what to expect; "click here" tells neither. Exact repetition of the same phrase on every link is worth avoiding, since it reads as engineered rather than written.

What is an orphan page?

A page nothing on the site links to. It can still be indexed if it appears in a sitemap or is linked from elsewhere, but it is discovered later, crawled less and treated as less important. Finding them needs a full crawl of the site, which is beyond what a single-page check can do.

Put this on your own site

Free to embed, no attribution required beyond the source link the frame carries itself. It runs entirely in your visitor's browser, sets no cookies and loads no third-party script.

Embed code
<iframe src="https://runthetests.com/embed/internal-link-checker/" width="100%" height="560" style="border:1px solid #e5e5e5;border-radius:8px" title="Internal Link Auditor" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Preview it at https://runthetests.com/embed/internal-link-checker/. Embedded pages are marked noindex, so yours stays the canonical copy — not this one.

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