Element Code: LI-033
What "excessive same-site links" actually means
This check flags a single page that points to the same destination URL many times over. Not many internal links in general, which is healthy, but the same target repeated: a product linked from the thumbnail, the title, the "read more", the price, and a button, all four or five going to the identical URL. Same site, same page, same href, stacked.
A handful of repeats is normal and fine. The check earns its keep when a template mechanically generates a dozen or more identical hrefs per row, or when boilerplate blocks (footers, mega menus, related widgets) repeat the same links on every page. That is when it stops being convenience and starts being noise.
Why it matters for SEO and crawling
Three concrete reasons I care about this on real audits:
Anchor consolidation. When a page has multiple links to the same target, search engines generally consider the anchor text of the first link and tend to discount the rest. Google engineers have described this "first link counts" behavior for years. So if your first link to a product page is a bare image with no alt and your descriptive text link is third, your best anchor context may be getting ignored.
Crawl clarity. Duplicate hrefs do not create duplicate crawl requests, a crawler dedupes URLs, but a page swollen with repeated links buries the genuinely important internal paths and makes your link graph harder to reason about. On large templated sites that murkiness is real.
User experience. Five links to the same page in one card is just clumsy. It hurts keyboard and screen reader navigation, since assistive tech announces each link separately, and it makes the page feel spammy to a skeptical reviewer.
How to detect it
The fastest path is a crawl-and-count. Here is how I run it:
| Tool | What to look at | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Screaming Frog | Bulk Export > Links > All Inlinks, then pivot by Source + Destination | Any source/destination pair with a high count |
| Sitebulb | Internal link reports and per-page link lists | Repeated destinations flagged per URL |
| Browser DevTools | Console: count anchors by href on a sample page | One href appearing 4+ times |
| Server logs | Not for detection, but confirms crawl focus | Context on what bots actually fetch |
In Screaming Frog the pivot is the whole game: group All Inlinks by the Source and Destination columns, count rows, sort descending. The offenders jump out. A quick DevTools one-liner on a representative page also works: [...document.querySelectorAll('a[href]')].reduce((m,a)=>(m[a.href]=(m[a.href]||0)+1,m),{}) and eyeball anything above three.
How to fix it, step by step
1. Confirm intent. Decide the one link per destination that should carry the descriptive anchor. Usually the text title.
2. Wrap, do not multiply. If a card genuinely needs the whole tile clickable, wrap the block in one anchor instead of nesting several separate anchors to the same URL. One <a> around the image and heading beats three.
3. Give the surviving link real anchor text. "Blue running shoes, mens" earns more than "click here" or an empty image link.
4. Fix at the template. These issues are almost always templated, so patch the component, not the page. One change fixes thousands of URLs.
5. Audit boilerplate. Footers and mega menus that repeat the same links site-wide are the usual culprits. Trim them to what users and crawlers actually need.
6. Re-crawl and verify. Run the same pivot again and confirm the counts dropped.
DO vs DON'T
- Wrap a full clickable card in a single anchor
- Give that one link descriptive anchor text
- Fix the pattern in the template component
- Keep intentional links (logo, breadcrumb) that serve users
- Re-crawl to confirm the reduction
- Nest four separate anchors to the same URL in one card
- Rely on an empty image link as your main anchor
- Stuff footers with duplicate links to boost "internal linking"
- Add keyword-stuffed repeat anchors hoping for a ranking bump
- Delete useful navigation just to hit a number
What good looks like
On a clean page, each internal destination is reached through one deliberate, well-anchored link, with a small number of justified exceptions like a logo that also links home. Your Screaming Frog pivot shows most source/destination pairs at a count of 1, and the few higher counts have an obvious reason. The link graph reads like a map, not a pile.
How the link resolves
FAQ
Does linking to the same page twice hurt my rankings?
How many repeats is too many?
Should I nofollow the extra links instead?
Do footer and menu links count?
An advanced audit maps every duplicate anchor, boilerplate bloat point, and wasted crawl path on your site, then hands you the exact template fixes.
Claude Vincent is a technical SEO consultant focused on crawlability, rendering, and AI-search visibility. He writes the field guides and case studies at SEO ProCheck, with a bias toward the durable, unglamorous work that decides whether search engines and AI answer engines can actually read and cite a site.
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