Audit internal links to important pages

Internal links are the one ranking signal a site controls completely, and the most under-used. Pages that earn impressions but sit at position 12 with two internal links are the cheapest ranking gains on the site. This playbook finds them and names the links to add.

Sequel supplies the traffic data. The crawl uses your own browsing.

Steps

1. Build the target list. google_search_console.query with dimensions: ["page"], 90 days ending 3 days ago, rowLimit: 1000, and with dimensions: ["query", "page"], rowLimit: 5000. Add the sitemap URLs. This is every page the site or Google considers real.

2. Crawl a bounded set. Start from the homepage and the top 100 pages by clicks. Fetch each, extract every same-host <a href>, and record source, target, anchor text. Cap the crawl at a few hundred pages and state the cap. Use sequel_workbench for the loop if you can execute code.

3. Separate template links from editorial links. A link that appears on most crawled pages (navigation, footer, sidebar) is a template link. Count it, but count it separately; editorial links from within body content carry more meaning. A simple rule: a target linked from over 80% of crawled pages is template-linked.

4. Count inlinks per target, total and editorial, and join to the Search Console data by path.

5. Find the findings.

   • Orphans: pages in Search Console or the sitemap with zero inlinks in the crawl. If they earn clicks, they are hanging on external links alone.
   • Under-linked opportunities: pages with meaningful impressions at position 8 to 20 and fewer than three editorial inlinks. These are the ranking gains.
   • Generic anchors on important targets: "click here", "read more", "learn more" on pages that should be described by their topic.
   • Hubs: high-traffic pages with few outbound editorial links, which could carry links to the under-linked pages.

6. Recommend specific links. Ten recommendations, each: from page A (a hub or a topically related page with traffic) to page B (an under-linked opportunity), with the anchor text drawn from B's top query. Say what makes A a sensible source.

Gotchas

• A crawl of a few hundred pages is a sample. Inlink counts are lower bounds. Say so, and raise the cap for a large site if the user wants precision.
• Links behind JavaScript may be invisible to a plain fetch. If the navigation seems to have no links, that is why; note it rather than reporting the whole site as orphaned.
• Do not add links for the sake of it. A link the reader would not click is a link Google discounts. Every recommendation should make sense on the source page.
• Redirected or canonicalised targets should be linked at their final URL. Continue with redirect-chain-audit if the crawl found links pointing at redirects.
• Search Console lags 2 to 3 days. End the window 3 days back.