Link Audit: How to Check Every Link on Your Site

A link audit is a review of every link that touches your site: the links other sites point at you, the links between your own pages, and the links you point at everyone else. Most guides only cover the first kind, which is a backlink audit. That matters, but the other two are cheaper to fix and, for a lot of sites, matter more to rankings day to day.

This is the full version. It is written for someone auditing their own site or a client’s site for the first time, and it can be done in an afternoon with free tools.

What a link audit covers

• Inbound links (backlinks). Who links to you, from where, with what anchor text, and whether any of it is spam.
• Internal links. How your own pages connect: which pages are easy to reach, which are orphaned, which are broken, and whether your most important pages get the most internal links.
• Outbound links. Where you send visitors: broken links, links to sites that have changed hands, and whether paid or affiliate links are marked correctly.

Part 1: Inbound links

Start with a free link popularity check to get the headline numbers, then pull the full list if the numbers surprise you. The four things to look at:

1. Referring domains vs. total backlinks. Referring domains is the number that matters. Ten thousand backlinks from twelve domains is a weak profile; four hundred backlinks from three hundred domains is a healthy one.
2. Anchor text mix. Natural profiles are mostly brand names, bare URLs, and generic phrases. A profile where most anchors are exact-match commercial phrases looks built, because it usually was.
3. Lost links. Links disappear when pages are deleted, sites redesign, or your old URL stops resolving. Each lost link from a real site is worth a polite email asking for it back, and a redirect if the target URL on your side changed.
4. Spam patterns. A flood of links from one platform, a spike in one week, or anchors in the wrong language. If you find any of that, switch to the backlink audit guide, which covers how to judge it and what to do.

Part 2: Internal links

This is the part most site owners have never looked at, and it is the part you fully control. You need a crawler: Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs), Sitebulb, or the site audit module in any SEO suite. Crawl the site from the homepage and check:

1. Orphan pages. Pages in your sitemap or analytics that the crawl never reached. They exist, but nothing links to them, so search engines treat them as unimportant. Link each one from at least one relevant page, or delete it if it has no purpose.
2. Click depth. How many clicks from the homepage to reach each page. Anything important should be within three. Pages buried at five or six clicks are telling search engines they do not matter.
3. Broken internal links. Links to pages that return 404. Fix the link or redirect the old URL. This is the fastest win in the whole audit.
4. Redirect chains. Internal links that point at a URL which redirects to another URL which redirects again. Update the link to point at the final destination directly.
5. Anchor text.Internal links are the one place you can use descriptive anchors freely. “Click here” and “read more” tell search engines nothing about the page they point at.
6. Link distribution. Your most important pages (the ones that make money or bring in traffic) should receive the most internal links. Often they receive the fewest, because they are only reachable from the navigation menu.

Google Search Console also shows this for free under Links: the “Top linked pages, internally” report tells you where your internal links actually concentrate.

Part 3: Outbound links

Outbound links get the least attention and take the least time. The same crawl that found your internal links will list every external link. Check for:

• Broken outbound links. Sites close, pages move. A page full of links to 404s looks abandoned to readers and to search engines. Fix, replace, or remove them.
• Domains that changed hands. An expired domain you linked to years ago may now be a casino site or a link farm. Spot check the destinations of your oldest outbound links.
• Paid, affiliate, and user-submitted links. Paid and affiliate links should carry rel="sponsored", and links in comments or forums should carry rel="ugc". Missing attributes on paid links are one of the few outbound issues that can draw a penalty.
• Links to competitors or thin pages. Not a penalty risk, just a judgment call. Every outbound link is a small endorsement.

The link audit checklist

1. Run a free link popularity check; note referring domains and total backlinks.
2. Pull the full backlink list and sort by domain, date, and target page.
3. Flag spam patterns and decide whether a disavow is warranted (usually not).
4. List lost links from real sites and request or redirect them.
5. Crawl the site and export internal links.
6. Fix every broken internal link and redirect chain.
7. Find orphan pages; link them or remove them.
8. Check click depth for your most important pages; pull them closer to the homepage.
9. Export outbound links; fix broken ones and check old destinations.
10. Confirm paid and affiliate links carry the right rel attributes.

How often to run one

A full link audit once or twice a year is enough for most sites. Run the internal link part again after any redesign, migration, or large batch of new content, because those are the moments orphan pages and broken links appear. For catching changes to inbound links between audits, see backlink monitoring.

Tools, free first

• Google Search Console: internal and external link reports for your own site, free.
• LinkPopularity.com: free inbound link check for any site, yours or a competitor’s.
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: crawls internal and outbound links, free up to 500 URLs.
• Paid suites (Ahrefs, Semrush, Sitebulb): the same checks with history, scheduling, and larger crawl limits. Useful for agencies; rarely necessary for a single site. See our link building tools guide for what each is for.

Link audit FAQ