- Element Code: ON-023
- Issue: Page has few or no internal links pointing to or from it
- Impact: Poor crawl discovery, weak authority flow, possible orphan pages
- Fix: Add contextual internal links from and to relevant pages
- Detection: Screaming Frog (crawl depth/inlinks), site crawl
What this issue means
Internal links connect your pages to each other. A page with no inbound internal links is an "orphan" — hard for Google to discover and unlikely to rank. A page with no outbound links fails to pass context and authority onward.
Why it matters
Internal links do three jobs: they help Google discover pages, they distribute PageRank/authority through the site, and they signal topical relationships. Strong internal linking is one of the most underused, fully-in-your-control ranking levers.
How to fix it
- Link from relevant, authoritative pages to the target, using descriptive anchor text.
- Add contextual outbound links to related content within the body.
- Build topic clusters — a pillar page linking to supporting pages and back.
- Find and fix orphans with a crawl tool.
- Use descriptive anchor text, not "click here."
Common mistakes
- Leaving new pages orphaned with no inbound links.
- Generic anchor text that gives no context.
- Over-linking the same anchor to the same URL sitewide.
Tools
Screaming Frog and Sitebulb report inlinks, crawl depth, and orphan pages; Search Console's Links report shows top internally-linked pages.
Related: Internal Linking FAQ
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