Step-by-Step Walkthroughs

01

Orphan Pages 45 min

How to find every orphan page on your site using Screaming Frog

Orphan pages are the most common structural problem on self-built websites. This walkthrough shows you how to run a free crawl, export the results, and cross-reference them with your Google Search Console index report to identify pages that exist but receive no internal links.

1

Download and configure Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free)

The free version of Screaming Frog crawls up to 500 URLs. Download it from screamingfrog.co.uk. Once installed, go to Configuration and set the user agent to Googlebot. This ensures the tool sees your site the way Google does, not as a generic bot that some sites block.

2

Run the crawl and export all indexed URLs

Enter your domain in the URL bar and click Start. Wait for the crawl to finish. Then go to the Internal tab and filter by HTML. Export this list as a CSV. This is your master list of pages Screaming Frog found by following links from your homepage.

3

Export your full URL list from Google Search Console

In Search Console, go to Index and then Coverage. Click the Indexed filter. Download the list. This is every URL Google has in its index for your site, including pages it found through sitemaps or external links, not just internal navigation.

4

Compare the two lists in a spreadsheet

Paste both lists into Google Sheets. Use a VLOOKUP or COUNTIF formula to find URLs present in the Search Console list but absent from the Screaming Frog list. These are your orphan pages. Screaming Frog could not reach them because no internal link pointed to them during the crawl.

5

Decide what to do with each orphan

Not every orphan needs to be linked. Some pages are intentionally excluded from navigation, like landing pages or thank-you redirects. Review each one. If the content is worth reading, find two or three relevant pages on your site that could naturally link to it and add the links. If the page is genuinely outdated or redundant, consider whether it should be removed or redirected instead.

Screaming Frog (free) Google Search Console Google Sheets

02

Site Structure 90 min

Building a hub-and-spoke structure when you already have existing content

Starting from scratch is easy. Retrofitting structure onto an archive of fifty posts is the real challenge. This walkthrough shows how to group your existing content, identify which pages can serve as hubs, and create the linking relationships that signal topical authority.

1

List every page on your site and assign it a topic

Export all your URLs. Open a spreadsheet. For each URL, write a one-to-three word topic label. Do not overthink this. The goal is to see clusters emerge. A personal finance blog might end up with clusters like Budgeting, Debt Payoff, Investing, and Taxes. Each cluster will become a spoke group around a hub page.

2

Identify or create a hub page for each cluster

A hub page covers the main topic broadly without going deep on any one subtopic. It links to every spoke page in its cluster. Look through your existing content first. You may already have a page that tries to cover the whole topic. If not, this is the page you write next.

3

Update every spoke page to link back to its hub

This step is tedious but important. Each detailed article in a cluster should contain at least one link pointing back to the hub. The anchor text should be descriptive, not "click here." Something like "the complete guide to budgeting for beginners" works well if that is what the hub page covers.

4

Link between spokes where the topics connect

Spoke-to-spoke links are optional but valuable. If your article about the debt snowball method naturally references the concept of tracking monthly spending, link to your budgeting article. These lateral links create a web of relevance that reinforces topical depth.

Google Sheets Screaming Frog (free)

03

Free Tools 30 min

Using Google Search Console to find pages with no internal links pointing to them

Search Console has a report that many site owners have never opened. The Links report shows you not just external backlinks but also internal link counts per page. Pages with zero internal links are candidates for immediate attention.

1

Open the Links report in Search Console

In the left sidebar, click Links near the bottom. The report has two sections. The top section covers External links from other websites. Below that is Internal links. This second section is what we are using here. It shows which of your pages receive the most internal links from the rest of your site.

2

Export the internal links data

Click the top pages by internal links list and then export it. You will get a spreadsheet showing each URL and how many of your other pages link to it. Sort ascending by link count. The pages at the top of that sorted list have the fewest internal links pointing to them.

3

Cross-reference with your best content

Look at the pages with low internal link counts. Are any of them pages you actually want people to read? Check their performance in the Performance report. If a page gets impressions in search but has only one or two internal links, adding more internal links from relevant pages may help it rank more consistently.

Google Search Console

04

Anchor Text 20 min

Writing anchor text that signals topic relevance without over-optimizing

Anchor text is the visible, clickable part of a hyperlink. It is also one of the clearest signals you can send to search engines about what the linked page covers. This walkthrough explains the spectrum from too generic to too exact-match, and where most internal links should land.

1

Understand the four anchor text types

Exact-match anchors use the precise keyword the target page is optimized for. Partial-match anchors include a version of it. Branded anchors use your site or company name. Generic anchors say things like "read more" or "this article." For internal links, partial-match and descriptive phrases work well. Exact-match on every link to the same page looks mechanical and unnatural.

2

Write the link as part of a natural sentence

The best anchor text reads as a natural continuation of the sentence around it. If you are writing about crawl budgets and you want to link to your article on orphan pages, a sentence like "Pages with no inbound links often go undiscovered during a crawl, which is why fixing orphan pages matters early" reads naturally and the anchor phrase describes the destination accurately.

3

Vary the anchor text across multiple links to the same page

If ten different articles on your site all link to the same hub page, they do not all need to use the same anchor text. Vary the phrasing. One article might say "hub-and-spoke content structure," another might say "organizing your site around pillar pages," and a third might say "how topic clusters work." All three communicate the same topic to search engines with natural variation.

No tools required

05

Site Structure 60 min

How many internal links per page is too many?

There is no universal number. But there is a logic to how link value spreads across a page, and understanding it helps you make decisions about density. This walkthrough covers the concept of link dilution and how to audit your own pages for it.

1

Understand what link dilution means

When a page links to another page, it passes some of its authority along. A page that links to five other pages divides that authority five ways. A page that links to sixty other pages divides it sixty ways. Each destination receives a smaller share. This does not mean fewer links is always better. It means that links on low-authority pages pointing to many destinations give each destination very little. High-authority pages with focused outlinks give each destination a meaningful signal.

2

Check the link count on your most important pages

Open your hub pages or most-visited articles in a browser. Use the browser's built-in Find function to count anchor tags, or install the free MozBar extension and look at the link count in the page analysis. Compare that number to the word count of the page. A 2,000-word article with 80 internal links has a link-to-content ratio worth examining.

3

Prioritize links by destination page importance

If you need to reduce links, keep the ones pointing to pages you most want to rank or be discovered. Remove or consolidate links that point to less important pages, redirect loops, or pages that already receive plenty of internal links from elsewhere on your site.

MozBar (free) Browser DevTools