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120 SEO Rules

Rules: Links & Anchors

Rules covering internal link health, broken external links, anchor text optimization, and nofollow usage.

Links define the architecture of the web. Internal links distribute PageRank equity across your site, while descriptive anchor text tells crawlers what the linked page is about.

LINK-001 — Broken Internal Link

  • Severity: ALERT (-5 pts)
  • Heuristic: An internal link points to a destination on the same domain that returns an HTTP 4xx error.
  • Why It Matters: Prevents search crawlers from indexing deeper pages and frustrates human visitors.
  • How to Fix: Update the href attribute on the referring page to point to the correct URL, or implement a 301 redirect.

LINK-002 — Broken External Outbound Link

  • Severity: WARNING (-2 pts)
  • Heuristic: A link pointing to a third-party domain returns an HTTP 4xx or 5xx error.
  • Why It Matters: Linking to dead third-party resources signals poor content maintenance.
  • How to Fix: Remove the dead link or update it to an authoritative, active source.

LINK-003 — Empty Anchor Text

  • Severity: WARNING (-2 pts)
  • Heuristic: An <a> element contains no text content, or wraps an <img> that is missing an alt attribute.
  • Why It Matters: Search engines use anchor text as a ranking signal. Empty anchors provide zero contextual meaning.
  • How to Fix: Add descriptive, human-readable text inside the <a> tag, or add an alt tag if linking an image.

LINK-004 — Generic Anchor Text

  • Severity: WARNING (-2 pts)
  • Heuristic: Anchor text uses generic non-descriptive phrases like "click here", "read more", or "learn more".
  • Why It Matters: Misses an opportunity to pass topical relevance and keyword context to the destination page.
  • How to Fix: Replace generic phrases with descriptive copy (e.g. "read our guide on SEO audit rules" instead of "read more").

LINK-005 — Internal Link Marked with rel="nofollow"

  • Severity: WARNING (-2 pts)
  • Heuristic: An internal link to another page on the same domain has a rel="nofollow" attribute.
  • Why It Matters: Traps and wastes PageRank link equity by preventing it from circulating through your site's internal pages.
  • How to Fix: Remove rel="nofollow" from standard internal links. Reserve it only for user-generated content or paid links.