Written by Joel CariñoInternal links are essential to a well-structured website. Internal linking helps search engines crawl a website’s pages and aids user navigation.
But without an effective internal linking strategy, some internal links on your website can inadvertently cause problems.
For example, a lack of regular internal link audits can limit a website’s PageRank distribution, or a website redesign may cause a number of internal links to be broken.
Knowing how to find internal links to a page prevents these issues. This also ensures that each link serves the user experience and supports uninterrupted web crawler activity.
There are different ways to quickly find internal links on a page, and we’ll explore three proven methods:
3 Ways to Identify Internal Links to a Page
Here are solutions to find the internal links pointing to a page on your website:
1. Google Search Console
The easiest method for finding incoming internal links is to use Google’s free website management tool.
Open your GSC and click the Links option from the sidebar menu.
This will show the list of the top internal and external links pointing to pages on your site. Press “More” to see the complete list of URLs.
Each number at the side shows how many internal links a particular page has. For example, our homepage has 36 internal pages pointing to it. Click any URL to see all of the referring internal pages. You can then export the list of all the pages into Google Sheets, MS Excel, or a generic CSV file.
While Google Search Console does identify internal links to your pages, the free tool report is underwhelming. Google uses contextual links only to find incoming internal links, not other sources, such as headers or image links. Another drawback is you can only use GSC to analyze websites you have access to, which means you cannot use the tool for competitor analysis.
2. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is one of the best SEO tools for checking a website’s internal linking structure. Site owners can use the tool for free for up to 500 URLs. But if your website has over 500 pages, you’ll have to pay an annual fee of $259 to access the tool’s complete features.
Follow the steps to find internal links using this internal link checker tool:
Start by crawling your website. Paste your homepage’s URL in the search box, then press start.
Select the URL for which you want to find incoming internal links. At the bottom of the screen, click “Inlinks.” This will reveal all of the incoming links to the targeted page.
Screaming Frog’s internal links report is comprehensive. You can adjust the filters above, such as the link type and link origin. Users can also swipe the results sideways to explore the columns from which they can extract valuable insights. Here are a few important ones:
- From: the source pages where the internal links come from
- To: the targeted page
- Anchor text: the link text used in the hyperlink so you can easily find the link within the page
- Follow: indicates if the link is dofollow or nofollow
- Link position: tells whether the link is contextual or navigational
- Link path: informs where the link is placed in the HTML
While important for SEO, Screaming Frog’s interface is daunting and may seem overwhelming for non-technically inclined users. This creates a steep learning curve for many.
Moreover, Screaming Frog is downloadable software, which means you need some drive space before you can crawl and audit your site.
Several tools offer better UX/UI, get the job done, and offer additional internal linking features. We’ll look at one below:
3. LinkStorm
LinkStorm is a dedicated internal linking tool that can identify internal links pointing to a page. Like Google and Screaming Frog, LinkStorm has spiders that crawl a website and its sitemaps
Once the crawling process is completed, open the Pages tab from the sidebar menu.
This will list the pages crawled on your website, featuring essential site metrics like impressions, average ranking in search results, and clickthrough rate. LinkStorm also identifies the page’s click depth or how close the page is to the homepage.
You can also toggle the column settings to remove or add more columns.
The numbers shown in the Links In column represent the number of contextual links pointing to the URL. Meanwhile, the Links Out column indicates the number of outbound links on the content.
We’ll focus on the Links In column to find incoming internal links. For example, our resource on link equity has 10 Links In, meaning ten other resources are pointing to it. Click the number shown in the Links In column, and you’ll find the specific referring pages, as shown below:
LinkStorm shows the referring pages and includes high-quality site metrics for both pages and the anchor used to connect them.
In addition, LinkStorm offers a wide range of features to help elevate your internal linking campaigns, and we’ll explore them later (unless you want to read them now, click here to skip to that portion).
Reasons to Find Internal Links Pointing to a Page?
Now that we’ve explored ways to discover incoming internal links, why is this process even necessary in the first place? We found four possible reasons:
To update internal links after a site restructure or redesign
Some pages may be moved elsewhere after a site restructure or redesign, such as when the blog section is moved to a new subdomain. Site owners must place proper URL redirects from the old links to new ones to ensure a smooth user experience. Finding internal links to a page helps determine which pages need to be updated with the new URLs.
To identify potential orphan pages
By definition, orphan pages are disconnected from the site structure, which means they are uncrawlable unless Google can discover them via backlinks. Pages with few internal links are the most vulnerable to becoming orphans. By finding incoming internal links, you can prevent the possibility of harboring orphan pages.
To boost the SEO performance of targeted pages
Both backlinks and internal links provide opportunities to transfer PageRank from the source to the linked page, improving the target page’s SEO performance and ranking. Analyzing a page’s incoming links helps site owners assess which pages need more links.
To optimize anchor texts used for internal links
Anchor text helps users and search engines by providing context about the target page’s content. Descriptive anchors containing relevant keywords boost the site’s user experience and help Google understand the topical relevance between the linked pages. Some internal linking tools, such as LinkStorm, show the anchors used in internal links, which is helpful for anchor text optimization.
To increase Google’s crawling efficiency
Google treats the homepage as the strongest page on a website; links closer to it or with lower click depth are considered important pages. Meanwhile, when a page has a deep crawl depth on a website, Google thinks it isn’t very important, and search engine crawlers might not even discover the page if a site has a limited crawl budget.
Identifying incoming internal links lets site owners optimize click depth by ensuring key pages are closer to the homepage. This results in authoritative pages receiving more equity and attention from Google, possibly leading to better rankings.
The Internal Link Audit Tool You Need for SEO
Internal link audits are essential website activities, especially if you take SEO seriously. The fastest and easiest solution to maintaining a well-connected website is to use LinkStorm.
LinkStorm automates the process of finding internal linking opportunities on a website.
The tool uses AI-assisted algorithms to find new internal linking suggestions, which you can accept or reject with a single click.
Users may modify the anchor accordingly, and accepted links will be inserted in the content in real-time. This allows users to add as many links as possible without spending much time.
LinkStorm quickly detects website issues, such as broken links, mismanaged redirects, and nofollow internal links.
For example, below are some of our website’s broken internal links and their status codes.
Using LinkStorm eliminates the need to manually visit web pages, find interlinking opportunities, and uncover issues affecting a website’s SEO. This gives you more time to focus on revenue-generating and high-level activities that require your undivided attention.
Interested to see what LinkStorm can do for you? Try it for 14 days for FREE—no credit card needed, no strings attached.