Agencies
Show a client where their link equity stops
Run the audit, filter to orphans, and share the map as a public read-only link or a PDF.
Internal Linking Tool
An internal linking tool that counts the links written into your content, finds orphans, and shows which pages should link to them.
Free to start. No account or card needed.
Discover
The real app, live
See the Internal Linking Tool work on a real site.
The real app, not a mock-up. In Vee3.ai this is Link Intelligence (Atlas internal links).
Run it on your site
What it does
What the internal linking tool measures
Editorial-only link counts
Unique inlinks and outlinks per page, read from the main content zone. Header, nav, footer, aside, cookie banners and page-builder chrome are skipped.
Overview
Internal Linking Tool, in depth.
Menus, headers, footers and sidebars link to everything, so they tell you nothing. A report that counts them makes almost every page look well linked. Vee3.ai's internal linking tool reads only the main content of each page and separates editorial links from related-post widgets and previous/next navigation. Any target linked from 20% or more of pages is treated as site chrome and dropped, so the counts you see are the links a writer actually chose.
Read the full guide · 2 min
Why internal links still matter for SEO
Internal links are how a search engine finds a page, how it reads what the page is about, and how authority moves from pages that earn backlinks to pages that need them. A page with no contextual inlinks is hard to discover and easy to undervalue, however good it is. A cluster whose pages never link to each other reads as a set of unrelated posts rather than topical coverage. An internal linking strategy fixes both, but only if you can see the real link graph first.
An internal link audit that finds real orphans
A live page that no other roadmap page links to from its content is an orphan. On a 777-page roadmap in one real workspace (The Marketing Agency, September 2026), the audit found 330 pages with no editorial link pointing at them, across 667 crawled pages. Orphans surface in the Dashboard's Technical checklist, in the Roadmap and Crawl columns, and as red pulsing rings on the topical authority map, where the Orphans only filter isolates them in one click.
An internal linking tool that suggests links by cluster
Open any live page on the Atlas and its details list link opportunities: up to three strong live pages in the same cluster that don't link to it yet, ranked by how well they rank and how much demand they carry. Because the clusters come from the keyword clustering tool, every suggestion is topically related by construction, not by a loose keyword match. Add the links in your CMS, press refresh, and the counts update.
Backlinks where they land
For every scanned URL, Vee3.ai pulls backlinks, referring domains, nofollow domains and broken backlinks from a live backlink index, 1,000 URLs per request, and keeps a sample of the 1,000 strongest links to your site. On the Atlas, each referring domain becomes a saucer in the sky that dives into the pages it links to, so you can see where outside authority enters the site and whether your internal links pass it on. The Link gaps only filter shows live pages ranking 4 to 30, or high on your priority list, with two or fewer referring domains.
Links planned into every new page
The same link graph shapes what you publish next. Every content brief plans internal links from your sitemap with exact URLs and natural 3 to 6 word anchors, and the writer keeps them in place. Link counts come from the same crawl as the SEO crawler, so you never reconcile two tools that disagree.
See every orphan on your site, and who should link to it
Start in a guest workspace with no account or card; the scan measures your internal links as it reads the site.
How it works
How the Internal Linking Tool works, in 5 steps.
-
Extract
A lightweight tag scanner reads each page's main content zone, skipping header, nav, footer, aside, cookie banners and page-builder chrome.
-
Classify
Each link is tagged editorial, related-posts widget, or previous/next and breadcrumb, so you can see equity with or without automation.
-
Filter templates
Targets linked from 20% or more of crawled pages are treated as chrome and removed.
-
Enrich
Backlinks, referring domains and broken links are attached per URL, and the strongest live backlinks are sampled for the map.
-
Act
Filter to orphans or link gaps, open a page's link opportunities, add the links in your CMS, then refresh.
Who it is for
Who uses these internal linking tools
In-house content teams
Close the orphans a publishing sprint leaves behind
New posts rarely get linked from older ones. After each batch, open the Orphans only filter, work through the link opportunities for each page, then refresh to confirm the counts moved.
Founders and solo SEOs
Find the pages one push away from page one
Link gaps only shows pages ranking 4 to 30 with two or fewer referring domains.
Why it is different
How this internal link audit differs
- 01Which links count Typical tools: Every link on the page, menus and footers included
- 02Automated links Typical tools: Mixed in with editorial links
- 03What an orphan is Typical tools: A page nothing links to, so a footer link hides the problem
- 04Suggestions Typical tools: Keyword matches from anywhere on the site
- 05Backlinks Typical tools: A separate report in a separate tool
- 06Accuracy Typical tools: Rarely published
What you get
Outputs you can act on.
Unique internal inlinks and outlinks per page
Editorial-only and all-link counts
Orphan pages with link opportunities from the same cluster
Backlinks, referring domains and nofollow domains per URL
Broken backlinks and link gaps
Public Atlas link or PDF export
Refresh on demand from the workspace
Under the hood: the limits and thresholds it runs on
- Link crawl
- Up to 3,000 live roadmap URLs, 6 at a time, 20 s timeout
- Template filter
- Targets on 20% or more of pages are dropped (with 10+ pages crawled)
- Link opportunities
- Up to 3 live pages per target, from the same cluster, ranked by position and demand
- Validation
- On a 667-page production site, 97% of link pairs matched a reference crawl with 100% kind agreement
- Backlinks
- Per-URL summary in batches of 1,000; sample of the 1,000 strongest live backlinks
- Refresh
- Backlink data refreshes at most once every ten minutes per brand
Internal Linking Tool questions
What does an internal linking tool do?
It maps which pages on your site link to which, so you can find pages that are cut off, pages that hoard links, and pages that should link to each other. Vee3.ai counts only links in the main content, flags orphans, and suggests linking pages from the same topic cluster.
Can I count related-post and breadcrumb links too?
Yes. On the Atlas, Include automated links switches the counts from editorial links only to every content-area link, including related-post widgets and previous/next or breadcrumb links. The orphan flag and link opportunities both follow that setting.
How do I find pages that should link to an orphan?
Open the page’s details on the Atlas. Under link opportunities you get up to three strong live pages in the same cluster that don’t link to it yet, ranked by their position and demand. Each one opens with a click so you can add the link.
Does Vee3.ai add links to my existing pages?
No. It shows where links are missing and which pages should carry them; you add them in your CMS, which keeps you in control of every anchor. New pages written in Vee3.ai already carry planned internal links with 3 to 6 word anchors.
How do I update link counts after adding links?
Use the refresh control on the Atlas. It re-crawls the links between your roadmap pages, then refreshes their backlinks and referring domains. Backlink data refreshes at most once every ten minutes per brand, and a repeat inside that window keeps the current values.
What does the Link gaps only filter show?
Live pages ranking in positions 4 to 30, or in roughly the top third of your roadmap by priority, that have two or fewer referring domains. It sits with the Atlas’s other backlink filters: minimum referring domains, minimum backlinks and Broken backlinks only.
Why are some subdomains missing link data?
Link data covers pages on your brand’s own host. Other subdomains with pages of their own, such as a blog subdomain, aren’t measured, and the Atlas names them in the Backlinks lens note. A page the scan didn’t fetch shows no outlink count, because its links are unknown.
Works with
Tools it hands work to.
Where it sits in the loop
Read the site you already have, page by page, link by link.
Point Vee3.ai at your site.
Start a workspace without an account and watch the roadmap build itself. Save it to an account whenever you are ready.