Internal linking tool: audit orphan pages, dead ends and click depth

XeoRank's internal linking tool is an audit: during a site crawl it flags pages that contain no internal links at all, and the crawl report lists orphan pages with no inbound internal links and how many clicks each page sits from the homepage. It does not suggest or insert links on its own; it shows you where the link structure is broken so you, or your AI assistant, can fix it.

That distinction matters when you compare tools. If you want software that proposes link pairs for you to accept, XeoRank is not that tool: it has no link-suggestion engine. What it gives you is a list of the pages that need attention, tied to the crawl that found them.

Who it is for

• Site owners whose new pages are not getting found, and who suspect nothing links to them.
• SEO leads cleaning up a site after a migration or a redesign, when old navigation and links have gone.
• Agencies that need a clear list of internal link problems to fix on a client site.
• Teams using Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor who want their assistant to read the audit and propose fixes for approval.

What the audit checks

The URL the crawl starts from is never listed as an orphan. Rules are page-type aware across the crawler, so pages such as legal, pricing and error pages are not held to editorial standards that do not fit them.

How it works

1. Start a crawl of the site from the dashboard, from your AI assistant through the XeoRank MCP server, or from the CLI with xyle site-crawl start <url>.
2. The crawler follows internal links from the URL you give it, usually the homepage, records every internal link it finds and works out how many clicks each page sits from the homepage. It also reads your XML sitemap and crawls the URLs listed there as well as the ones it finds through links.
3. If your navigation or links are built with JavaScript, turn on JavaScript rendering when you start the crawl from the dashboard, or use --render-js in the CLI. XeoRank then renders pages that need it in headless Chromium, so links that only appear after scripts run are counted. Crawls your assistant starts through MCP read the raw HTML.
4. Pages with no internal links go into the site's fix queue alongside the other crawl issues, and you can link them to a goal.

The internal link checks are part of the full technical crawler, so pages with no internal links are reported in the same crawl report as broken links, redirect chains and duplicate titles.

Fixing what the audit finds

This is the part XeoRank leaves to you and your assistant. A typical workflow:

• For an orphan page, decide whether it should exist. If yes, find the related pages that should mention it and add a link with a descriptive anchor. If no, remove it from the sitemap or redirect it.
• For a page with no internal links, add links to the pages a reader would want next.

Your AI assistant can help with the judgement. Ask it to read the crawl's pages that no link reaches and the content of related pages, and it can propose where each link should go. That proposal comes from your assistant reading your pages, not from a XeoRank link engine, so review it the way you would review a colleague's suggestion.

On WordPress, including Elementor pages, the assistant can then make the edit through the free XeoRank Connector plugin. Writes are off for each site until you enable them, every change to a page's content keeps a snapshot you can restore, and you can ask for a preview link first.

See Elementor SEO for how edits keep pages editable.

Internal links in new content

When you create a content brief for a keyword, the brief lists pages on your site that already rank for related queries. Those are the internal-link targets for the new page, so a new article starts out linked into the pages that already earn search traffic.

What it does not do

• It does not suggest links automatically. There is no engine that scores pages and proposes link pairs.
• It does not insert links on its own. Any edit to your site goes through your AI assistant, which asks before each tool call, and WordPress writes stay off for a site until you turn them on.
• It does not model link equity or produce a PageRank-style score for each page.
• It does not audit links from other websites. Backlinks are a separate feature on Pro and above.
• It only sees what the crawl reaches. If a section of the site is blocked to crawlers or needs a login, its links are not in the audit.

Try it from a chat

"Crawl example.com and list the pages no link reaches and the pages with no internal links. For each page no link reaches, read the related pages and propose where a link should go. Do not change anything yet."

The assistant runs the crawl, reads the findings, and comes back with a list of proposed links for you to accept or reject.

Pricing

Site crawls and the internal link audit are on every plan. Starter is $19 a month for one site, with a 14-day free trial and no card to start. Pro is $49 a month and Growth is $109 a month.

See pricing for crawl sizes and what each plan includes.