The Link Audit Playbook

Auditing what you already have

Before adding a single new link, understand the ones you have. A link audit is mostly counting and comparing, and it surfaces problems that are invisible day to day.

Start with the common internal linking mistakes to avoid, since most sites are guilty of at least three of them without realising.

Then check anchors. Following anchor text best practices across an existing archive is tedious but it is the highest leverage cleanup available to most blogs.

Orphans come next. Knowing how to find orphan pages turns a vague worry into a concrete list you can work through in an afternoon.

Close the loop by measuring blog performance without guesswork, so you can tell whether any of it worked.