How to Check Internal Links on Your Website

To check internal links on your website, open Google Search Console's Links report and read the "Top internally linked pages" table, then run a site crawler such as Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) to see every link, its anchor text and any page with none. Then fix orphans, broken links and vague anchors.

You published a new guide three weeks ago and it still has no impressions. You suspect nothing on your own site points to it, but you have 200 posts and no idea which ones mention it. Or you are about to delete an old page and want to know what will break. Both jobs start with the same question: which pages link to which.

Which pages link to a specific page?

Search Console answers this for free, as long as the site is verified. Its Links report has an Internal section with a "Top internally linked pages" table; click any URL in it to see the pages that link to that one.

Open Search Console and choose your property.
Click Links in the left sidebar.
Under Internal links, click More to open the full table.
Click the page you care about. The next screen lists the pages linking to it.

Two limits to know. Google says the report "shows a sample of internal and external links", so some URLs may be missing, and each table is limited to 1,000 rows. Links are grouped by canonical URL, and the report doesn't tell you whether a link is nofollow. Treat it as a quick, free first look, not a complete inventory.

How do I see every internal link on my site?

A crawler is the only way to see every internal link, because it follows links the same way Googlebot does and records each one. The usual free option is Screaming Frog SEO Spider, which Screaming Frog says will "analyse internal links, link counts, crawl depth" and whose free version "is restricted to crawling up to 500 URLs in a single crawl."

Running a crawl

Enter your homepage URL and start the crawl. When it finishes, the Internal tab lists every URL found, with columns for Inlinks (how many links point to the page) and Crawl Depth (how many clicks from the homepage).

Finding the links to one page

Click a URL, then open the Inlinks tab at the bottom. It shows each linking page, the anchor text and whether the link is followed. This is the complete version of what Search Console samples.

Finding pages with no internal links

Connect your XML sitemap in the crawl settings. Pages that are in the sitemap but that the crawl never reached are your orphans: Google can find them through the sitemap, but nothing on your site vouches for them. What is an orphan page explains why that matters.

If your site is bigger than 500 URLs, crawl one section at a time or use one of the paid or free tools in our internal linking tools comparison.

How do I check the links on a single page?

Your browser is enough for one page. Right-click a link and choose Inspect to see its href and any rel attribute, or run a quick count in the console:

[...document.querySelectorAll('a[href]')].filter(a => a.host === location.host).length

That counts links pointing to your own domain, including the menu and footer. Google's link guidelines say it "can only crawl your link if it's an <a> HTML element" with an href, so a "link" built from a clickable div or a button with a script won't show up in that count, and Google won't follow it either.

A third free option is a site search for mentions: site:yourdomain.com "topic phrase" returns pages that mention a topic and could link to your target page but may not yet.

What should I fix once I've found them?

Checking only pays off if you act on what you find. Four problems account for most of the work.

Orphan pages

Any page you want to rank needs at least one link from another page. Google's own wording: "Every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site." Add a contextual link from the two or three most closely related posts.

Broken internal links

Crawlers report internal links returning 404. Update each link to the live URL rather than relying on a redirect, which adds a hop. See what is a broken link in SEO for how to prioritise them.

Vague or repeated anchor text

Sort the Inlinks tab by anchor. "Click here" and "read more" tell Google nothing; Google asks for anchor text that is "descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant". What is anchor text covers the types.

Important pages buried deep

Check the Crawl Depth column. A page that sits 4 or 5 clicks from the homepage is hard for visitors to reach and receives little of the authority your homepage collects. Link to it from a hub page or a popular post to bring it closer.

How often should I check internal links?

Check after every batch of new content and once a quarter for the whole site. New pages are the ones most likely to be orphaned, and old pages are the ones most likely to have picked up broken links as URLs change. A quarterly crawl of a few hundred pages takes minutes. Internal links are also only half the picture: links from other sites are what bring new authority in, and how to track backlinks covers the external side. If you need more of those, Backlinkster is one way to trade in-content links with related sites.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find all internal links pointing to a page?

In Search Console, open Links, then the "Top internally linked pages" table, and click the page: you'll see a sample of the pages linking to it. For a complete list with anchor text, crawl the site with Screaming Frog and open the Inlinks tab for that URL.

Is there a free internal link checker?

Yes. Google Search Console's Links report is free for any verified site, and Screaming Frog's free version crawls up to 500 URLs per crawl. Ahrefs' free Webmaster Tools also runs a site audit on sites you verify.

Why doesn't Search Console show all my internal links?

Google says the Links report shows a sample of links and that some URLs might be omitted. Tables are also capped at 1,000 rows, and links are grouped under canonical URLs, so a link to a non-canonical duplicate appears under the canonical page.

How many internal links should a page have?

Google says there is no "magical ideal number" of links per page. Link where it helps the reader: a few contextual links in a 1,000-word article is typical. What are internal links in SEO covers the reasoning.

Do menu and footer links count as internal links?

Yes. They are crawlable internal links, and they are why your homepage and top categories usually show the most inlinks. Contextual links inside the body text carry more topical meaning, so don't rely on navigation alone to link to important articles.