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All lessons in Technical SEO Auditing Lesson 6.6 of 84

Module 1: Introduction to Technical SEO Auditing

  1. 1.1What Is a Technical SEO Audit?
  2. 1.2Technical SEO Audit vs. General SEO Audit
  3. 1.3When Should You Audit a Website?
  4. 1.4Types of Technical SEO Issues
  5. 1.5Defining Audit Scope and Objectives

Module 2: Website Crawling and URL Discovery

  1. 2.1How SEO Crawlers Discover URLs
  2. 2.2Configuring a Website Crawl
  3. 2.3Crawl Scope, Limits, and Exclusions
  4. 2.4Internal Links and Crawl Depth
  5. 2.5Orphan Pages and URL Discovery
  6. 2.6Crawl Data vs. Search Engine Data
  7. 2.7Identifying Crawl Coverage Gaps

Module 3: HTTP Status Codes and Redirect Auditing

  1. 3.1Understanding HTTP Status Codes
  2. 3.2Finding 4xx Errors and Broken Links
  3. 3.3Identifying 5xx Server Errors
  4. 3.4Redirect Chains and Redirect Loops
  5. 3.5Internal Links to Redirected URLs
  6. 3.6301 vs. 302 Redirects
  7. 3.7Auditing 404 Pages and Soft 404s

Module 4: Crawlability and Indexability Auditing

  1. 4.1Crawling vs. Indexing
  2. 4.2Robots.txt Audit
  3. 4.3Meta Robots and X-Robots-Tag
  4. 4.4Noindex and Canonical Conflicts
  5. 4.5XML Sitemap Validation
  6. 4.6Canonical URL Auditing
  7. 4.7Identifying Indexability Conflicts
  8. 4.8Comparing Crawl Data with Google Search Console

Module 5: URL Structure and Duplicate Content Issues

  1. 5.1URL Structure and Normalization
  2. 5.2Duplicate URLs and Duplicate Pages
  3. 5.3HTTP vs. HTTPS and Hostname Variations
  4. 5.4Trailing Slashes and URL Parameters
  5. 5.5Pagination and Faceted Navigation
  6. 5.6Canonicalization Strategies
  7. 5.7Internal Linking to Preferred URLs

Module 6: Technical On-Page Auditing

  1. 6.1Missing and Duplicate Title Tags
  2. 6.2Missing and Duplicate Meta Descriptions
  3. 6.3Missing, Duplicate, and Multiple H1 Headings
  4. 6.4Heading Hierarchy and HTML Structure
  5. 6.5Missing Image Alt Attributes
  6. 6.6Internal Link and Anchor Text Issues
  7. 6.7Empty, Thin, and Near-Duplicate Pages
  8. 6.8Auditing HTML Metadata at Scale

Module 7: Website Performance and Core Web Vitals

  1. 7.1Core Web Vitals: LCP, INP, and CLS
  2. 7.2Lab Data vs. Field Data
  3. 7.3Identifying Slow Pages
  4. 7.4Image and Resource Optimization Opportunities
  5. 7.5JavaScript and CSS Performance
  6. 7.6Mobile Usability and Responsive Rendering
  7. 7.7Prioritizing Performance Fixes

Module 8: JavaScript SEO and Rendering

  1. 8.1How Search Engines Process JavaScript
  2. 8.2HTML Source vs. Rendered HTML
  3. 8.3Client-Side vs. Server-Side Rendering
  4. 8.4JavaScript-Generated Content and Links
  5. 8.5Rendering Failures and Missing Content
  6. 8.6Lazy Loading and Crawl Accessibility
  7. 8.7Diagnosing JavaScript SEO Problems

Module 9: Structured Data and Schema Auditing

  1. 9.1Structured Data and Schema.org Basics
  2. 9.2JSON-LD and Structured Data Formats
  3. 9.3Finding Structured Data Across a Website
  4. 9.4Detecting Invalid or Incomplete Markup
  5. 9.5Schema Validation and Rich Result Eligibility
  6. 9.6Conflicting or Duplicate Structured Data
  7. 9.7Prioritizing Schema Fixes

Module 10: Analyzing Audit Data and Prioritizing Issues

  1. 10.1Reading Crawl Reports and Exports
  2. 10.2Grouping URLs by Issue Type
  3. 10.3Identifying Root Causes vs. Symptoms
  4. 10.4Evaluating Severity, Impact, and Effort
  5. 10.5Separating Sitewide and Isolated Issues
  6. 10.6Identifying False Positives
  7. 10.7Building an Actionable Issue Register

Module 11: Technical SEO Audit Reporting

  1. 11.1Structuring a Technical SEO Audit Report
  2. 11.2Documenting Evidence and Affected URLs
  3. 11.3Writing Developer-Ready Recommendations
  4. 11.4Mapping Issues to Business and Search Impact
  5. 11.5Creating a Prioritized Remediation Roadmap
  6. 11.6Presenting Findings to Stakeholders
  7. 11.7Tracking Fixes and Ownership

Module 12: Fix Verification and Technical QA

  1. 12.1Re-Crawling After Fixes
  2. 12.2Comparing Before-and-After Crawl Results
  3. 12.3Verifying Redirects, Canonicals, and Indexability
  4. 12.4Detecting Regressions and Newly Introduced Issues
  5. 12.5Testing Website Changes Before Deployment
  6. 12.6Confirming Fixes with Search Console and Other Evidence
  7. 12.7Closing Audit Findings and Recording Results

Internal Link and Anchor Text Issues

In this lesson

  • Why anchor text matters for internal links
  • The internal link issues to check at scale
  • How to analyze anchor text by target page
  • How to find weakly linked important pages

Short answer

Internal anchor text tells search engines what the linked page is about. Audit links by exporting all inlinks, then checking for generic anchors like 'click here,' empty anchors, internal nofollow links, pages with very few inlinks, and pages overloaded with links. Fix templates and add descriptive contextual links to important pages.

A Siargao surf school linked to its lesson packages from 30 blog posts. Every single link said “click here.” Google learned almost nothing about the packages page from all that linking. Changing the anchors to “beginner surf lessons in Siargao” turned 30 empty votes into 30 clear ones.

The checks

  1. Generic anchors: “click here,” “read more,” “learn more,” “here.”
  2. Empty anchors: icon links with no text or alt.
  3. Internal nofollow: links within your site marked nofollow.
  4. Weakly linked pages: important pages with few unique inlinks (Lesson 2.4).
  5. Overloaded pages: thousands of links from mega menus or tag clouds.
  6. Links to non-200 or non-canonical URLs (Lessons 3.5 and 5.7).

How to audit

  1. Bulk export All Inlinks with anchor text, source, target, and link position.
  2. Filter to content links (exclude navigation and footer) to see editorial anchors.
  3. Pivot by target page: list its anchors and count them. Are they descriptive and varied?
  4. Use the crawler’s Non-Descriptive Anchor Text and Internal Nofollow filters.
  5. Sort important pages by unique inlinks.

Practice: good anchor or issue?

Sort each item into the right group.

  • 'beginner surf lessons in Siargao'

  • 'click here'

  • Icon link with no text or alt

  • 'See our Cloud 9 board rentals'

  • Internal link with rel="nofollow"

Common mistakes

  • Exact-match anchors everywhere. Vary naturally.
  • Judging anchors including navigation. Look at content links separately.
  • Nofollowing internal links to “save” link value. It does not work that way.
1. Which anchor gives the strongest relevance signal?
2. What do internal nofollow links usually cause?
3. How should you analyze anchors for one page?

Your action

Next, you will find empty, thin, and near-duplicate pages.

Key terms

Anchor text
The clickable text of a link, which describes the target page.
Generic anchor
Anchor text that says nothing about the target, such as 'click here' or 'read more'.
Empty anchor
A link with no text and no image alt, often icon links.
Internal nofollow
A rel="nofollow" on links within your own site, which weakens discovery and signals.

Questions beginners ask

Should anchors be exact-match keywords?

Descriptive is better than exact-match. Natural variations like 'Mayon ATV tours' and 'ATV adventure near Mayon' are ideal.

Is 'read more' always bad?

Not if the card also has a descriptive linked heading. It becomes a problem when it is the only link to the page.

How many links per page is too many?

There is no fixed limit. Pages with thousands of links, often mega menus, dilute each link and are hard for users.

Should I nofollow internal links to login pages?

No need. Use noindex on pages you want out of results. Internal nofollow mostly causes problems.

Related lessons

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