Internal link and orphan check
Maps what a page links to, what links back, and which internal links are broken.
What this is actually checking
Check a page's internal linking: outbound internal links, broken ones, and whether the page links to anything at all. Orphan detection across the site with a full crawl.
Internal linking is the highest-leverage on-site work available because it costs nothing and needs nobody else's cooperation.
A useful link needs a sentence that already exists and already shares terms with the target. Anywhere else, adding the link means writing a new sentence, which is a content change wearing the clothes of a linking change.
The 4 checks behind it
- mediumPage links to nothing internally
A page that links nowhere is a dead end for both users and authority flow.
- highBroken internal link
Internal links to 404s waste crawl budget and strand users mid-journey.
- mediumOrphan page
No internal link points here, so it gets little crawl attention and no internal authority.
- lowPage is more than four clicks from the homepage
Depth correlates with crawl frequency and with how much internal authority a page receives.
How many internal links should a page have?
There is no correct number, and any tool quoting one is guessing. The useful questions are whether every important page is reachable, whether anything is orphaned, and whether the anchors describe the destination.