Internal link checker: every link on the page, and what its anchor says.

Most internal linking advice is about quantity: link more, link from every new post, build the hub. The quantity is rarely the problem. The problem is that the links that exist are wearing anchors that say nothing, so a page with twelve internal links gives a crawler twelve chances to learn what its neighbours are about and takes none of them.

The tool above reads one page’s HTML and lists what it links to, in order, with the anchor text on each link. It flags the patterns that waste a link, and it does so without fetching anything, so it works on drafts as well as live pages.

What the flags mean

Generic anchor. “Click here”, “read more”, “learn more”, “this article”. The link works; the anchor tells nobody where it goes. Rewrite it as the subject of the destination page, in the words that page uses for itself.

Image link, no alt. An image wrapped in a link, with no alt text, is a link with no anchor at all. The alt text is the anchor for an image link. Write one that describes the destination, not the picture.

Same anchor, different target. Two links whose anchor text is identical but which point at different pages. This is the one that actively confuses: a crawler reads two pages described by the same words and has to guess which one the words belong to. Split the wording.

Links to itself. A page linking to its own URL, usually from a template or a copied block. Harmless to readers, useless to everyone, and a sign the template needs a look.

Target linked N times. Informational, not a fault. A long page can reasonably link to its pillar twice. It becomes a fault only when the repeats carry generic anchors, in which case the first flag already caught it.

What this tool cannot see

It reads one page, outbound. For a new article the more important question is inbound: which older pages link to it, and with what anchor. That lives on those pages, and the fix is editorial, not technical: add the new page to the pillar’s link list and to two or three siblings, with anchors that name its subject.

It also does not follow the links. A target that has since been deleted looks identical to one that returns 200. Pair it with a crawl for status codes; use this for the anchors, which no crawler judges.

Across a client roster

On one page this takes a minute. Across thirty client sites publishing weekly, it is a standing task: every new article needs anchors out to the right siblings and anchors in from the pages that already rank. That recurring pass is part of what AltoRank runs on every draft before a human approves it, and the approval screen shows the internal links it proposes so the person can change the anchor before anything publishes.