SEOs in my circle continuously whisper about the power of internal links.
“I know dude, huge jumps in traffic every time we do a round of internal linking. People don’t talk about it enough.”—Larry Page, Maybe
When you’ve already got:
- Good content
- Good backlinks
Then crafting an internal linking strategy to pull the threads together should be hot on your agenda.
I’ve written about it twice before:
- 3 myths about internal linking that need to stop
- How to do internal linking properly (SOP) - Premium access only
And, in today’s newsletter, I want to take you guys one step further.
Below is my step-by-step guide (and template spreadsheet) for running an internal link audit that’s prioritized around revenue growth goals.
How to Audit Internal Links [And Prioritize Commercial Opps]
1/ Grab a copy of my free template
I put a lot of love into this template. I hope it’s a useful addition to your audit processes.
2/ Add your content to tab #2
Put the URLs of all your “SEO” content into the spreadsheet. By that, I mean all the pages you want to rank. You can leave off that random PPC landing page, but you should have all your key product landing pages and everything else that’s search optimized.
3/ Append crucial data to each URL
To each URL, append crucial information about the page. The spreadsheet uses these to automate a prioritization algorithm.
- Word count: I use a common rule of thumb that each page should have 5 internal links for every 1,500 internal links (at a MINIMUM).
- Page type: Internal links share backlink authority and also indicate the priority of a page in the architecture of a site. More important pages SHOULD have more internal links if you want them to rank highest.
Insert this information and each page will be tagged with a Commercial Priority from 1 to 3, like this:
4/ Add internal link data to tab #3
Head over to Ahrefs. Input your URL and navigate to the “Best by Links” report.
Export all this data. Paste it into tab #3.
5/ Add orphan page data to tab #4
Next, head over to your site audit tab in Ahrefs and visit “All Issues” and “Orphan Page Report”. It should look like this:
Click on this and export the data. Copy and paste the URL data to tab #4 where other fields will be populated.
6/ Review your results
At this point, you’ve done all the boring data entry work. Now we can look at the results.
In tab 2, the cells colored red show URLS below the recommended minimum mentioned earlier.
Filter these results by Commercial Priority to order the list.
Start linking (tips at the end of this article).
I strongly recommend you see these numbers as a starting point, not an endpoint. Just because a high-priority landing page is GREEN, doesn’t mean it’s done.
I continuously add internal links to my client’s #1 priority pages in almost all new content. They can’t get enough of these and I want to encourage Google to see this page as relevant, always.
7/ Fix all orphan pages
You’ll be lucky if a page ranks in Google if it has zero internal links.
Orphan pages are hard to discover, crawl and index. So fix all of these ASAP.
Final Tips on Internal Linking
- There is no real max for internal links. If a page is high priority for your business, keep building.
- If a page is in your menu or footer, it may look like it has 100s of links. But contextual internal links should be a primary focus. ScreamingFrog should help you exclude non-contextual internal links (if you have the budget to buy it.)
- Try to be user-friendly with your links. Link between pages on related topics, using anchor text that would be useful to the user.
- For big wins, add internal links from pages with lots of backlinks to high-priority pages. Internal links pass authority.
How I Can Help You Accelerate Your Organic Growth
1. The Scalable SEO Operation Package: Join 100s of SEOs & Content Leaders inside the Scale Package. This is a comprehensive guide, ops dashboard, and template library for building a scalable content operation that drives real revenue results. I've personally used this system to scale my latest client to 70,000 clicks/month in 5 months—in as little as 2 hours per week of management.
Use code: FRIENDS10 to get a 10% discount.
2. Become a How the F*ck Premium member: Join 247 monthly members who enjoy access to 30+ of the most incredible SEO case studies (and regular new ones). We've heard the inside secrets behind successful growth stories like Hotjar, Typeform, and Monday, as well as incredible niche sites like Living Cozy and Retro Dodo. These stories are how you build a real search-first growth engine.
