Skip to content 
As a blog grows, its internal links can quietly fall out of shape: posts get orphaned, links break, and important pages end up under-linked. An internal link audit fixes this, systematically reviewing your internal links to find and resolve problems. The result is a healthier, better-connected blog that ranks and reads better. This guide shows you how to audit internal links on your blog, step by step, so your link structure stays strong as your content grows.
Auditing is how you maintain the internal linking you have built. It complements our guides to internal linking the right way and anchor text, within the wider blog post writing resources.
Why Audit Your Internal Links
Internal links degrade over time without maintenance. New posts get published without links pointing to them (orphaned), links break when you move or delete pages, important pages end up under-linked, and anchor text or relevance drifts. An audit catches these issues, which otherwise quietly undermine your SEO and reader experience. Regular auditing keeps your internal link structure healthy as your blog evolves.
The payoff is real: fixing orphaned posts, broken links and under-linked pages can produce noticeable SEO gains, since you are improving the structure of content you already have. As Backlinko notes, internal link optimisation is often high-return work. Auditing your internal links is worthwhile because it surfaces and fixes the problems that accumulate in any growing blog, protecting and improving the crawlability, authority flow and usability your internal linking provides.
Find Orphaned Posts
A key audit task is finding orphaned posts, pages with no internal links pointing to them. Orphaned posts are hard for search engines to discover and value, and readers rarely reach them. To find them, use an SEO crawling tool or your CMS to identify pages that receive no internal links, then plan to link to them from relevant existing content.
Orphaned posts are common in growing blogs, especially newer content that older posts were never updated to link to. Finding and fixing them, by adding links from related posts, integrates them into your site and helps them perform. Tools like site crawlers or Google Search Central“>Google Search Console can help surface poorly-linked pages. Finding orphaned posts is one of the most valuable parts of an internal link audit, since connecting isolated content often yields quick, meaningful improvements.
Check for Broken Internal Links
Broken internal links, links pointing to pages that no longer exist or have moved, frustrate readers and waste crawl budget and link equity. During your audit, check for broken internal links using a crawling tool or broken-link checker, then fix them by updating the link to the correct URL or removing it if the destination is gone. Broken links are a common, fixable problem.
Links break when you change URLs, delete posts, or restructure your site, so they accumulate over time. Catching and repairing them keeps your internal linking functional and your readers and search engines happy. A broken-link check should be a standard part of every audit. Checking for and fixing broken internal links ensures your link structure actually works, preserving the reader experience and SEO value that broken links would otherwise quietly erode across your blog.
Identify Under-Linked Important Pages
Your most important pages, key posts, pillar content, conversion pages, should be well-supported by internal links. During your audit, identify important pages that receive too few internal links, then strengthen them by adding relevant links from other posts. Channelling more internal links to your priority pages can boost their rankings, since well-linked pages are seen as more important.
To do this, list your key pages and check how many relevant internal links point to each, using your audit tools. Where a priority page is under-linked, find relevant posts to link from. This deliberate strengthening directs authority where it matters most. Identifying and fixing under-linked important pages is a high-value audit task, ensuring your most valuable content gets the internal link support it needs to rank and perform to its potential.
Review Anchor Text and Relevance
An audit is also a chance to review the quality of your existing internal links, their anchor text and relevance. Look for vague anchors (click here) to replace with descriptive ones, and check that links point to genuinely relevant content. Improving weak anchors and removing or fixing irrelevant links enhances the SEO value and usability of your internal linking.
Good anchor text and relevant targets are core to effective internal linking, so an audit that improves them across your blog pays off. While more involved than checking for broken links, reviewing anchor text and relevance raises the overall quality of your link structure. Reviewing anchor text and relevance during your audit ensures your existing internal links are not just functional but genuinely effective, clear, relevant and valuable, across your whole blog.
Fix, Then Audit Regularly
After identifying issues, fix them: link orphaned posts, repair broken links, strengthen under-linked pages, and improve weak anchors. Work through your findings systematically, prioritising the highest-impact fixes. Then make auditing a regular habit, perhaps every few months or as your blog grows significantly, since internal link issues continually accumulate in an active blog.
Regular audits keep your internal link structure healthy over time rather than letting problems pile up. Combined with good linking habits when publishing, periodic audits ensure your blog stays well-connected, crawlable and authoritative. Maintaining the right number of links and quality across posts is part of this. Fixing your findings and auditing regularly is what turns internal link auditing from a one-off cleanup into an ongoing practice that keeps your blog’s link structure consistently strong.
A Simple Step-by-Step Audit Process
If a full audit sounds daunting, it helps to break it into a repeatable sequence you can run in an afternoon. Start by generating a complete list of your blog’s posts and the internal links pointing to each, using a site crawler or an SEO plugin that reports internal link counts. With that list in hand, your first pass is purely diagnostic: flag every post with zero or very few internal links pointing to it (your orphans and near-orphans), mark any broken internal links the crawl surfaced, and note your most important pages so you can check their link support separately. This diagnostic snapshot turns a vague sense that your linking needs work into a concrete, prioritised list of issues.
Your second pass is the fix-up. Work through the list from highest impact to lowest: repair broken links first since they actively harm experience, then connect orphaned posts by adding links from relevant existing content, then strengthen your priority pages by linking to them from more related posts. As you go, improve any weak anchor text you encounter rather than treating it as a separate job. Finally, record what you changed and set a reminder to repeat the process in a few months. Running the audit as this simple diagnose-then-fix sequence makes it manageable and ensures nothing important slips through, so each pass leaves your internal link structure measurably healthier than before.
Turn Audit Findings Into Better Habits
The most valuable outcome of an internal link audit is not just the fixes you make but the patterns you notice, because those patterns point to habits worth changing. If your audit keeps surfacing orphaned posts, it usually means you are publishing without adding backlinks from older content, so the fix is to build that step into your publishing routine. If you repeatedly find important pages under-linked, it suggests you are not thinking about which posts should funnel authority toward your key content, so a content map showing your pillars and priority pages can help. If broken links are common, it may be that URL changes are not being followed up with link updates.
Treating each audit as feedback on your process, rather than just a cleanup, gradually reduces how much cleanup future audits require. Over time, good publishing habits, linking new posts both ways, using descriptive anchors, funnelling links to priority pages, mean your link structure stays healthy with far less remedial effort. The audit then becomes a lighter check that confirms things are working rather than a heavy rescue operation. This is the real goal: not to depend on periodic big audits to rescue a neglected structure, but to build linking habits so sound that your blog stays well-connected almost automatically, with audits serving as a periodic safety net rather than the main event. A blog maintained this way keeps the crawlability, authority flow and reader experience that strong internal linking provides, consistently and with minimal ongoing effort.
How Content That Sales Can Help
We build and maintain strong internal link structures, including the auditing that keeps them healthy. Our team links new content thoughtfully and can help review and improve your existing internal linking. Explore our blog post writing service to see how we keep your blog well-connected, crawlable and authoritative through sound internal linking practices and ongoing care.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an internal link audit? It is a systematic review of your blog’s internal links to find and fix problems, orphaned posts, broken links, under-linked important pages, and weak anchor text, keeping your link structure healthy as your blog grows.
How do I find orphaned posts? Use an SEO crawling tool or your CMS to identify pages that receive no internal links, then add links to them from relevant existing content. Orphaned posts are common in growing blogs and easy to fix once found.
How often should I audit internal links? Periodically, perhaps every few months or after significant growth, since internal link issues continually accumulate in an active blog. Regular audits, combined with good linking habits when publishing, keep your structure healthy.
What tools help with an internal link audit? SEO site crawlers and broken-link checkers surface orphaned posts, broken links and link counts, while Google Search Console offers insight into how your pages are linked and indexed. These tools make auditing systematic and efficient.