Internal Link Graph
Map your internal link structure, find orphan pages, and understand crawlability with link context detection.
The Internal Link Graph maps the connections between pages on your domain. Every time the Edge Crawler processes a page, it extracts all links — capturing anchor text, link context, and nofollow attributes. Use this data to find orphan pages, verify link depth, and optimize your internal linking strategy.
How Data Is Collected
Link data is extracted automatically during every crawl. For each page, the crawler records:
- All
<a>elements with theirhref, anchor text, and attributes - Whether the link is internal (same domain) or external
- The structural context of the link (navigation, content body, footer, sidebar)
- Whether
rel="nofollow"is present
No extra credits are consumed — link extraction is part of the standard crawl process.
Link graph data is included with every crawl at no additional cost. Data is updated each time a page is re-crawled.
Inbound Links
The Links tab on any URL Detail page shows all internal pages that link to the current URL:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Source URL | The page containing the link |
| Anchor Text | The visible link text |
| Context | Where on the page the link appears (nav, content, footer, sidebar) |
| Nofollow | Whether the link has rel="nofollow" |
Inbound links are a strong signal of a page's importance. Pages with few or no inbound links may be undervalued by search engines.
Outbound Links
The outbound section shows all links from the current page to other pages on your domain. This helps you verify that your content pages link to relevant related content and that important pages receive internal link equity.
External Links
External links — those pointing to other domains — are listed separately. Monitor these to:
- Verify external links point to reputable, live destinations
- Check that affiliate or partner links have the correct attributes
- Identify pages with excessive outbound links that may dilute link equity
Link Context Detection
SerpWise classifies each link by its structural context on the page:
| Context | Description |
|---|---|
| Navigation | Links inside <nav> elements or common nav patterns |
| Content | Links within the main content body — editorially placed |
| Footer | Links inside <footer> elements |
| Sidebar | Links in <aside> or sidebar-pattern elements |
Content links carry the most SEO weight. Navigation and footer links appear on many pages and pass less unique value. This classification helps you focus on the links that matter most.
Orphan Page Detection
An orphan page has zero inbound internal links — no other page on your domain links to it. These pages are difficult for search engines to discover through crawling and often receive less ranking authority.
The Site-Wide SEO Dashboard surfaces a domain-wide count of orphan pages. From there, you can review each orphan and decide whether to:
- Add internal links from relevant pages
- Remove the page if it's no longer needed
- Create a redirect to a more authoritative page
Link Depth
Link depth measures the minimum number of clicks needed to reach a page from your homepage (computed via breadth-first search). Pages with high link depth are harder for crawlers to discover and may receive less ranking authority.
| Depth | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 0 | Homepage |
| 1 | Linked directly from the homepage |
| 2 | Two clicks from the homepage |
| 3+ | Deep pages — consider adding shortcuts from higher-level pages |
The URL Detail page shows the computed link depth for each URL.
Per-URL Analytics
Deep traffic analytics for individual URLs — page views, bot activity, response times, referrers, and rule trigger data.
Change Detection & Alerts
Automatically detect SEO-critical changes between crawls — title, description, canonical, robots, heading, and content changes with severity levels.