Searchlab Extracting and Auditing the Links on a Page
Pulling every link from a page shows you exactly how authority flows through your site, which pages you are pointing at, and where you are leaking value to places you never intended.
Internal versus external, and why the split matters
- Internal links distribute authority around your own site and tell Google which pages you consider important. Your best pages should be the most-linked.
- External links pass a little authority away, but relevant outbound links to credible sources are a positive quality signal. Do not strip them out.
What to look for in an extraction
- Orphaned important pages. If a key page appears in almost no internal link lists, Google treats it as unimportant. This is one of the most common causes of pages being discovered but never indexed.
- Excessive links per page. Hundreds of links dilute the authority each one passes. Mega-footers are the usual culprit.
- Broken destinations. Every dead link wastes crawl budget and frustrates readers.
- Nofollow used by accident. Some CMS plugins add rel="nofollow" to internal links, quietly blocking your own authority flow.
- Redirect chains. Links pointing at URLs that then redirect. Point them at the final destination instead.
Anchor text, without overthinking it
Descriptive anchors help both readers and search engines. "Read our Core Web Vitals guide" beats "click here" every time. Do not force an exact keyword into every anchor, though; natural variation looks like a real site, and repetitive exact-match anchors look manufactured.
Practical workflow: extract links from your homepage first. Whatever it links to is what you are telling Google matters most. If your best commercial pages are not there, that is your highest-value fix.
Frequently asked
How many links should a page have?
There is no hard limit since Google dropped the old 100-link guideline. Judge by usefulness: if a reader would struggle to find the important link, there are too many.
Should I nofollow external links?
Generally no. Use rel="sponsored" for paid links and rel="ugc" for user-generated content. Editorial links to good sources should stay followed.
Do links in JavaScript count?
Google can render JavaScript, but links only present after user interaction are usually not discovered. Keep important links in the initial HTML.