8 Most Common Internal Link Issues & How to Fix Them

Internal links allow users and search engine crawlers to navigate every page on your site seamlessly.

A good internal linking structure effectively distributes link juice across pages, ultimately benefiting a site’s SEO and increasing its search visibility.

However, just as internal links are beneficial, internal link problems can be detrimental.

Common internal link issues, like broken internal links, can adversely affect your site’s SEO performance and user experience. 

This resource uncovers the 8 most common internal linking mistakes and teaches site owners how to find and fix them. 

Why Should You Get Rid of Internal Link Issues?

In the introduction, we glossed over some benefits of using internal links effectively. Allowing internal link issues to persist invalidates the noble purpose of having internal links in the first place.

An internal linking audit reveals a website’s underlying problems. But what incentive do site owners get for dealing with internal link issues?

Let’s take a look at an example.

For instance, you mistakenly set up a redirect loop on your website triggered by clicking on an internal link. 

The poor soul who clicks on it will endlessly bounce from one URL to another, never reaching their intended destination.

In the end, they will arrive at an error page that looks like this:

These inconveniences, minor as they seem, can have a profound negative effect on users and search engines, ultimately pulling your ranking on SERPs. Meanwhile, fixing that problem ensures users’ navigation on your website remains seamless and uninterrupted.

Below, we’ll take a look at the specific advantages of resolving internal link issues:

To improve the user experience

There are different types of internal links, but they are all designed to help users explore relevant pages during their search journey. 

For example, navigational links make up a website’s main navigational structure. They act as signposts, helping users reach specific sections, pages, or categories on a website.

Conversely, contextual links in the body will take users to relevant content or related pages that satisfy their search query. 

Internal link issues can often prevent users from reaching their intended destination or take them to URLs they did not request, ruining their experience.

Resolving these issues ensures internal links work as originally intended: to satisfy the user experience.

To maximize site-wide link equity distribution

Internal links facilitate the flow of link equity or link juice throughout a website.

If an internal link points to a page, some of the linking page’s authority will transfer to the linked page. In other words, a page becomes more authoritative if it has many internal links pointing to it.

However, internal link issues can hamper a website’s efficient distribution of internal links.

Link juice is equally distributed among all links on a page, including problematic links (broken links and nofollow links).

In the example above, all links received an equal amount of link juice (represented by the star), even if one led to a broken link. Instead of the functional pages receiving one and a half stars each, all linked pages received one star.

That means not only does the link juice dissipate when pointing to broken links, but the remaining functional links will also receive lesser equity.

Fixing internal link issues means minimizing the presence of problematic links, which, in turn, ensures SEO value gets where it needs to be.

To boost the site’s SEO potential

Web crawlers use internal links as entry points for exploring the vast ends of a website. 

A well-connected website allows the Googlebot to crawl every page and add them to Google’s index accordingly. 

However, the lack of internal links or the presence of issues, like broken links, can become roadblocks in the web crawler’s path. As a result, some pages may become orphaned, preventing them from ranking on Google and, ultimately, limiting their online visibility.

A good site audit helps you find broken links and reveals all hurdles on the Googlebot’s path so you can resolve them quickly.

To enhance content discoverability

The common misconception is that once you remove all broken links or redirect issues, all content becomes easily discoverable.

Well, perhaps to web crawlers. Provided there are no roadblocks, they can scour a website, rarely using their entire dedicated crawl budget.

However, content discoverability for users is different. Even if the content is technically accessible, the time and patience we’re willing to spend looking for that resource is limited.

Optimizing the click depth of all pages on your website ensures they are discoverable (and convenient to reach) for both humans and search engines.

8 Common Internal Linking Issues You Must Deal With

1. Broken Links

Broken links are a common internal linking issue that can significantly harm your website’s user experience and SEO.

These links lead to nonexistent, deleted, or cannot be found pages, resulting in 404 errors. This is what the 404 error message looks like on Google:

Encountering 404 errors frustrates users and disrupts their navigational experience. Search engines also waste their crawl budget on broken links, reducing their indexing efficiency. 

Site owners may fix broken internal links manually. 

However, this involves manually going through each page and clicking every link to check if they are broken links. After that, you can replace the old link with the correct one to send users to the new location.

Conversely, you can use dedicated internal linking tools, such as LinkStorm, to quickly find all broken links on your site.

From LinkStorm’s dashboard, select Issues on the sidebar menu.

Then, click the Broken tab from the three options, and the tool will automatically list all broken links found on your website.

From there, you can visit every page listed and replace the incorrect links via your CMS provider.

Using a tool like LinkStorm hastens the entire process and ensures no broken link is overlooked. When you opt to look for broken links manually, some might go unnoticed. 

We have a dedicated resource on broken links where we uncover their causes, SEO impact, and specific steps to resolve them.

2. Nofollow Links

Nofollow links are internal links qualified with a nofollow attribute. You can see if links are nofollow by looking at the page source. 

For example, let’s say this example hyperlink is nofollow. This is what the HTML will look like:

<a hrefs=“https://www.example.com” target=“_blank” rel =“nofollow”>example hyperlink</a>

Normally, all links are dofollow unless a rel=”nofollow” attribute is added to the <a> anchor element.

This makes finding nofollow links easily detectable when you examine the page source. 

Unlike broken links, nofollow links do not hamper the user experience. In fact, nofollow links have nothing to do with visitors but more with your site’s SEO.

Nofollow links instruct search engines not to associate with the linked page, preventing them from passing SEO value or link equity. This means nofollow links will not boost target pages’ authority and ranking potential. 

Nofollow links will also not recognize the connection between the linked pages, undermining your entire internal linking strategy.

To optimize SEO, ensure important internal links do not have the “nofollow” attribute, allowing link equity to flow freely throughout your site. You may use LinkStorm for this purpose.

Again, from LinkStorm’s dashboard, select Issues on the sidebar menu. Then, click the No Follow tab from the three options, and the tool will reveal all nofollow internal links on your website.

You can then resolve those nofollow links on your website or native CMS provider. 

Instead of viewing your site’s every page source and examining the HTML, LinkStorm pulls up all nofollow links in a snap. This saves time and effort, allowing you to dedicate more time to other activities.

We created a dedicated resource about nofollow links, where we compared nofollow vs dofollow links, discussed the importance of nofollow links, and explained in detail how to find them on your site.

3. Mismanaged Redirects

Redirects are instructions that send users and web crawlers to a URL different from the one originally requested.

Redirects are not inherently bad. In fact, they can be essential for specific situations. 

For instance, when you change a page’s URL, setting up a redirect from the old URL to the new one preserves the old page’s SEO value while ensuring users can still find the content. 

Another is when merging content. If you have two similar pages, redirects allow you to denote which is the canonical of the pair. This prevents user and search engine confusion, concentrating the SEO value on one page instead of splitting it into two.

Countless more instances exist where redirects become necessary, but if not properly managed, they can create problems like redirect chains and loops.

A redirect loop occurs when a URL redirects back to itself or a series of other URLs that eventually redirect back to the original URL, creating an endless cycle.

This traps users in a loop, preventing them from accessing the intended content and causing frustration. Web crawlers may also get stuck in the loop, which causes confusion and may prevent them from indexing the pages in the loop.

A redirect chain happens when a URL redirects to another URL, which then redirects to yet another URL, and so on. 

In the graphic shown below, it takes 4 redirects from the source page before it reaches the target page.

This sequence of redirects slows down page load times, adversely affecting user experience. Redirect chains also weaken the SEO value of the links involved in the series.

Manually finding URL chains is possible, but it can be tricky and slow.

If clicking a link results in a long buffer and ends up with an error message, you might be stuck in a redirect loop.

Meanwhile, if the web page loads slowly but still reaches the intended destination, you might have a redirect chain on your hand. 

Conversely, you may use LinkStorm to isolate all redirects on your website.

Again, from LinkStorm’s dashboard, select Issues on the sidebar menu. Then, choose the Redirected tab from the three choices. This will show all existing redirects on your website.

Site owners can then fix those redirects on their website or native CMS provider.

We created a dedicated resource on URL redirects, where we examine their benefits and various types and teach the specific steps for fixing redirects on a website. 

4. High Click Depth

Click depth refers to the number of clicks it takes to reach a target page starting from the homepage.

While click depth doesn’t impact the site’s crawlability and indexability for Googlebot, it does affect  content’s discoverability for the user.

Naturally, older pages become buried in the pile of new content publications on a website.

A page’s click depth increases as it ages, becoming more stale because fewer visitors reach it. When this happens, the content will taper off its search rankings until it gets overtaken by newer content. 

The sweet spot to prevent this is to keep the click depth equal to three or less.

To achieve this, find ways to link old content with newer ones. This increases the chance of users clicking the old content’s link, breathing life into it.

LinkStorm is a perfect tool for this purpose:

From the dashboard, select the Opportunities tab from the sidebar menu.

Then, choose which algorithm you’d like LinkStorm to use to find internal link opportunities on your website.

After seeing the results, arrange the Depth column on the referring page according to the least click depth.

This will show your website’s recently published content. On the left, you will find the stale content (with higher click depth), which you can link to.

If the link suggestions are pertinent, you may simply press the Accept button on the Status column, and the link will automatically be placed in real time.

We created a dedicated article on click depth, in which we differentiated click depth from URL structure, answered FAQs, and shared the best practices for optimizing it. 

5. Non-descriptive Anchor Texts

Anchor texts are the clickable text in a hyperlink. They are considered context-providers, essentially telling users and search engines what to expect when they click a link.

When anchors are non-descriptive, such as “click here” or “read more,” they fail to convey the context of the linked page.

This ambiguity can confuse users, making navigation less intuitive and lowering engagement. Search engine crawlers may struggle to find the relevance between the source and target pages. A lower relevance score influenced by a non-descriptive anchor may affect how a target page performs on SERPs for related queries.  

To fix this issue, it’s advisable to use clear, descriptive anchor texts that accurately reflect the content of the destination page.

LinkStorm’s Anchor tab uncovers all of a website’s anchor texts, both for internal and external links.

Take a look at Linkody’s anchor text usage in the past:

Most of the anchor texts used in the past are non-descriptive. You may click the blue numbers on the side to display which particular links use those anchors. 

To change this, simply visit those pages and replace the links with more descriptive anchor texts. 

If you’re interested in learning more about this, we created a dedicated resource on anchor texts. In it, we discussed their importance, different types, and how they work in HTML.

6. Overuse of Exact-Match Anchors

Site owners have multiple options to make anchor texts descriptive and contextually relevant. 

Let’s say you’re targeting an article on the complete guide to internal linking. Here are a few solutions to make anchors descriptive:

• Exact-match anchors: uses the precise seed keyword as the anchor text (“complete guide to internal linking”)
• Phrase-match anchors: incorporate additional words to the exact-match anchor for diversification purposes (“resource on the complete guide to internal linking”)
• Partial-match anchors: slightly modifies the exact-match anchor (“full internal linking guide”)

Either of the above effectively provides relevant context to users and search engines regarding the linked page. Diversifying anchor text usage is advisable because using the same anchors might seem spammy to Google.

However, many users fall into the trap of overusing exact-match anchor texts.

LinkStorm’s anchor tab helps identify exact-match anchor texts you have repeatedly used. For instance, take a look at the example below:

The “guest posting” anchor test is used 8 times throughout the website. Perhaps the site owner can diversify the exact-match anchor by using other phrases like “submitting guest posts,” “guest blogging,” “guest post outreaching,” etc.

This keeps the website off Google’s radar and, potentially, its SEO-damaging penalties.

7. Excessive On-page Links

Internal linking is not indiscriminate. Site owners must use internal links strategically for the best results. This involves keeping the number of internal links on a web page in check.

Excessive on-page links are a common internal linking issue many site owners face.

While many relevant internal links are always welcome to boost user experience, excessive internal links per page may be negative as far as SEO is concerned.

Multiple links on a page dilutes the amount of link juice transferred from a source to a target page.

LinkStorm can be a powerful ally for minimizing outgoing internal links on a web page.

From the dashboard, visit the Pages tab.

This will show all pages on the website. To spot the pages with excessive on-page links, look at the Links Out column.

In the past, Google advised keeping on-page links at a reasonable number, which was about a few thousand at most. This advice has since been removed from their webmaster guidelines.

Today, different agencies and experts have varying consensus on the allowable number. But as a rule of thumb, you may stick with 1-5 per 1,000 words or 6-10 for 2,000 words. 

Going above this threshold is fine, but do know that this will dilute the link equity distributed among the linked pages.

If you’re interested in learning more, we crafted a comprehensive resource on how many internal links per page are enough. We explored various perspectives, considered reasons to minimize linking, and discussed the relationship between link count and crawl efficiency.

8. Orphan Pages

Orphan pages refer to pages with no incoming internal links, making them inaccessible to users and search engines.

These pages are essentially “lost” within your site, as they are not connected to your internal linking structure. As a result, users cannot visit the orphan page unless they know the specific URL.

Worse, orphan pages are often rendered unindexed because Googlebot cannot crawl and index the target page. This heavily limits the web page’s SEO potential and visibility in SERPs.

If you’re using modern CMS, the likelihood of having orphan pages is low. Newly published pages are often added to the website’s blog archives, meaning every page will have at least one internal link coming from the homepage.

While this is already adequate enough for SEO and user experience, it could still be improved. 

LinkStorm’s Pages tab is a helpful information hub for finding pages with zero contextual links pointing to them. 

Look for the Links In column and arrange the rows from least to greatest.

Pages with 0 Links In value are those that have no incoming contextual links or internal links pointing to them from a source page’s content.  

It’s advisable to build internal links pointing to these pages, as this boosts users’ discoverability of these pages. Plus, having more backlinks to these unlinked URLs also increases web crawlers’ crawling and indexing efficiency.

To find internal link suggestions for these unlinked pages, copy the URL.

For example, let’s copy the link to the page about “AI Writing Tools.” Then, visit LinkStorm’s Opportunities tab from the sidebar menu and select your desired algorithm.

Paste the link to the “Search To URL or Title” bar and click apply.

This will reveal all possible internal link suggestions pointing to the targeted URL.

To accept and implement the internal link suggestion, simply press Accept.

This approach improves content discoverability, enhances user experience, and boosts SEO performance by ensuring all valuable content is properly indexed and ranked.

Ready to Resolve Internal Link Issues on Your Website?

Internal link issues can come in various shapes or forms. While individually distinct, they can all be equally detrimental to your website’s SEO performance and user experience when left unchecked.

This is where an intentional website audit comes in. 

Armed with a specialized internal linking tool, such as LinkStorm, you can manage your internal linking campaigns and ensure your website is free from issues.

So, are you ready to find and fix all internal linking problems on your site? We’re here to help.

Check out LinkStorm’s pricing page and see which plan works best for your site.

Happy linking!