Audit: Internal Linking and Security
The two remaining categories of the audit: how pages are linked to each other and what is the basic security of the connection. Problems from here are rarely loud, but they spoil the weight distribution within the site.
Internal Linking
| Finding | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Links to broken pages | Error | Internal links lead to 4xx/5xx — weight leaks into nowhere |
| Broken external link | Warning | Link to an external site that no longer exists |
| Orphan page | Warning | No internal link leads to the page |
| Deep page | Note | More than five clicks from the main page — the robot rarely reaches it |
| Many links on the page | Note | More than 150: weight is spread thinly |
| Long or titled URL | Note | Cosmetics, but affects appearance in the results and convenience |
Orphans and deep pages are the most valuable findings in this category: they are fixed with internal links for free, see internal linking and term analysis.
Security
- Mixed content (error) — on an https page, resources are loaded via http. The browser complains, and some content may not load at all.
- No HSTS header (note) — the browser does not know that the site should only open via https. More details — security headers.
This is just a basic pair of checks: a full security analysis is done by a separate service — how to read the Shield report.
Why Depth is More Important than it Seems
Depth is the number of clicks from the main page to the page via the shortest path. The greater it is, the less frequently the robot reaches the page and the less weight gets to it. The practical consequence: if an important page is at the sixth level of nesting, neither links nor texts will save it — it must first be moved closer to the main page through the menu, section, or block of links on popular pages.
Link Graph
In addition to the list of problems, the audit builds a map of internal links: it shows which sections receive weight and which are isolated. This is the best way to understand why an important page is not growing, even though technically everything is fine with it.