Documentation → Going deeper
Internal links and orphan pages
How your pages connect to each other, which ones nothing points to, and why that matters more than most people think.
Why internal links matter
Search engines discover pages by following links. A page nothing links to is one a crawler may never find, or may find and treat as unimportant — because nothing on your own site suggests otherwise.
Internal links also pass authority. A page linked from your homepage and three popular articles carries more weight than an identical page sitting in isolation.
The link map
This screen lists your pages with how many internal links point to each one and how many it points out. Sort by incoming links ascending and the bottom of that list is where your problems are.
You’ll usually find two patterns: recently published content nobody has linked to yet, and older pages that lost their links when a hub page was rewritten.
Orphan pages
An orphan has zero incoming internal links. It’s reachable only by direct URL or from your sitemap.
Not every orphan is a mistake. Landing pages for campaigns, thank-you pages and legal pages are often orphaned deliberately. The check flags them; you decide which ones are intentional.
The ones worth fixing are content pages you actually want ranking. For those, the answer is a link from somewhere relevant and already visible — not a link farm in the footer.
Broken and redirected links
Two related checks run alongside the map:
- Broken internal links — links in your content pointing at pages that no longer exist. Fixable directly: the plugin rewrites the link.
- Internal pages that redirect — links pointing at a URL that then redirects somewhere else. Not broken, but wasteful, and advisory rather than auto-fixed because the right destination is a judgement call.
Fixing them well
Add links where they make sense to a reader, not where they’d be convenient for a crawler. A relevant link inside a paragraph is worth more than five in a “related posts” block, and it doesn’t make your pages worse to read.
Three or four good internal links per substantial page is a reasonable target. More than that and you’re usually padding.
Find your orphan pages
Runs with no keys connected. Unlimited scanning on every plan.