An internal linking audit asks whether someone can reach an important page from a useful starting point on your own site. Begin with the pages people need to make a decision, find relevant articles that can lead to them, and check the actual links after publication.
This guide uses a small service website as a working example. The same worksheet can support a product catalog, a musician’s site, or a company publication. The priority list is an editorial decision: it should reflect what your readers need and what your business actually offers.
1. Name the pages that matter before counting links
Make a short list of destinations a prospective customer should be able to find: the service they need, how it works, evidence, the people behind it, and the next step. Give each URL one job. If you cannot explain why a page belongs on the list, revisit its purpose before adding links to it.
On this site, the GEO agency page explains the engagement, while the full-stack GEO method explains how the work is measured. A reader comparing approaches can use the GEO and AEO definition guide first. Those are different questions, even though the terminology overlaps.
Keep the worksheet simple: destination URL, reader question, a suitable source article, proposed anchor text, and a verification result. Add an owner if more than one person maintains the site.
2. Check incoming links, not just the page’s own menu
A page can have a beautiful navigation bar and still receive no useful link from an article. Inspect both directions. Can a reader move from the guide to the service? Can someone on the service page find the explanation that would help them decide?
Google’s link guidance recommends linking to every page you care about from another page on your site. It also describes crawlable links as anchors with usable href attributes and recommends concise, descriptive link text. There is no prescribed ideal link count.
Record contextual links separately from navigation and footer links. Both help people move around, but they answer different audit questions. A sitewide Blog link establishes a route to the publication. An article explaining the scope of a service helps the reader decide whether to open that service page.
3. Add the link where the next question arises
Read the source article as a prospective customer. Mark the sentence where you would ask for a definition, a worked example, evidence, or help applying the advice. Place the link there and use wording that describes its destination.
For example, a founder asking why a competitor appears in an answer can start with the competitor-recommendation guide. Once the problem is understood, GEO implementation explains the repair work. The evidence room lets the reader inspect the public record supporting this practice.
Do not turn every sentence into a link. If several links compete for the same next action, choose the most useful one and move the others to a short related-reading section. A link should explain the reading path, not advertise the size of your keyword list.
4. Give overlapping pages a distinct place in the reading path
An audit often finds several pages that use different names for closely related work. Keep a note explaining the question each page serves. If two pages offer the same answer with no meaningful distinction, flag the overlap for editorial review instead of trying to rescue both with more anchors.
Our generative engine optimization guide is a broader starting point. The AEO agency page is for readers evaluating help with answer visibility. The LLM SEO agency page addresses that service terminology. Their links should tell the reader which question they are moving toward.
Keep operational services in their own context. If your bottleneck is supervising recurring work, read about managed AI agents. For process ownership and written guardrails, use the AI operations page. A business that needs an engineer to diagnose systems and handoffs can start with the forward deployed engineer engagement.
5. Verify the destination and the published source
Open the destination and check that it answers the question promised by the anchor. Note redirects, missing pages, login walls, and canonical URLs that point elsewhere. Then open the source article on the public domain and follow the link there. A link present in a source file is not evidence that the deployed page contains it.
Inspect the page at a narrow screen width and with keyboard navigation. Link text should remain readable, visible focus should identify the selected link, and the reading path should not depend on a hover-only menu. Record what you checked and the date.
For new posts, check the title, description, canonical URL, visible author and dates, structured data, blog-index entry, and sitemap entry. Treat each as a separate field to verify. A successful response code alone does not establish that the intended article is being served.
6. Separate a repaired path from a search result
Completing this audit establishes that the links exist and work. It does not establish that a search engine indexed the destination or that an AI answer cited it. Google’s AI features documentation says established SEO practices remain relevant and that additional special optimization is not required for AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Keep the before-and-after link worksheet. If you also track search or answer visibility, use a separate dated record for those observations. That prevents a change in an answer from becoming an unsupported claim that one internal link caused it.
The visibility checklist provides the wider audit sequence. The Screenshot develops the measurement method, and the press page collects publication and speaking context. To discuss a specific site, send the site and the pages you want people to find.
A useful audit handoff
- The exact important-page list and the reader question each page answers.
- At least one relevant incoming path for each destination, with its source URL.
- A blog or guide link on the important page where it helps the reader.
- Broken or misleading destinations assigned to an owner.
- A dated public readback for the links you changed.
- Search and AI-answer observations kept separately from link verification.
Repeat the check when publishing a new article or retiring a service. The lasting improvement is a site whose reading paths stay understandable as its content grows.