What the Internal Link Opportunity Mapper does
This mapper finds places where one of your pages mentions another page's topic but does not link to it, and quotes the exact sentence together with the anchor text to use. It also counts each page's inbound internal links, flags orphan pages that nothing in the sample links to, and measures how many clicks each page sits from the start page.
You can paste page data as CSV - from any crawler export or your CMS - or let it read a small sample of your site: at most 25 public pages on the one site you name, read-only and one at a time. Pasted data never leaves your browser.
How to use it
- Paste a CSV with url, title, text and links columns (an h1 column helps), drop a CSV file, or switch to Crawl a site, enter the start page and choose how many pages to read.
- Optionally list target pages with the phrases that should link to them, as URL | phrase; phrase. Use this for synonyms and product names. Without targets, each page's H1 or title is its phrase.
- Select Find opportunities. Each row gives the page to edit, the sentence with the phrase highlighted, the anchor text and the page to link to.
- Check the pages table for orphans (no inbound link from another page in the sample) and pages that could not be reached from the start page.
- Download both tables as CSV and add the links where they genuinely help the reader.
Reading the results
An opportunity needs three things: the source page mentions the target's phrase as whole words (case-insensitive, with a plural s allowed), the source is not the target, and the source does not already link to the target. Only the first matching sentence per page pair is shown, so the list stays short.
Inbound counts distinct pages in the sample that link to the page; links from a page to itself do not count. Orphan means no other page in the sample links to it - the start page is never counted as an orphan.
Depth is the fewest clicks from the start page (the first row of a CSV, or the crawl's start URL) following links between sampled pages. "Not reached" means no chain of links in the sample leads there, which usually signals weak internal linking.
Worked example: a seven-page garden tools shop
The example has seven pages and one extra target: the whetstones page, with the phrases "whetstone" and "sharpening stone". The mapper finds eight links already in place and seven opportunities - for example, the lawn care page's sentence "Many gardeners also use pruning shears to tidy edges the mower cannot reach" should link "pruning shears" to the pruning shears page, and the sharpening post's "Use whetstones for small blades..." should link to the whetstones page.
The home page has five inbound links; the whetstones page, the autumn jobs post and the sharpening post have none and are flagged as orphans. None of those three can be reached from the home page by following links, so their depth is "not reached" - the clearest fix is to link to them from the pages that already mention their topics.
Why internal links matter
Google's documentation describes links as a way it finds pages and understands their relevance, and recommends descriptive anchor text that tells readers and search engines what the linked page is about. A page with no internal links pointing to it is harder for both people and crawlers to find.
That is the documented part. How much any single link changes rankings is not documented and not something this tool estimates. Treat the opportunities as editorial suggestions: add links where a reader at that sentence would want to go next.
Limitations: what the result does not prove
- The crawl reads at most 25 pages, so counts, orphans and depth describe that sample, not the whole site. Use a full crawler export as CSV for larger sites.
- Text from the crawler is the page's visible body text, including navigation and footer, with block boundaries lost. The page splits joined words before capitalised words, which occasionally breaks a name such as McDonald. Pasted CSV text is used as given.
- Matching is literal: synonyms, abbreviations and other word forms are found only when you list them as target phrases.
- It does not check whether links are followed, blocked by robots.txt or rendered only by JavaScript; a link in the links column is taken as present.
Privacy: where your data goes
a2z.tools requests the public address you enter with an ordinary read-only GET, the way a browser would, and analyses the response. Private and internal addresses are refused. Nothing is stored. The crawl reads at most 25 public pages on the one site you name, read-only, one at a time. Session recording and tag-manager scripts are switched off on this page.
Standards and sources
Frequently asked questions
What is an internal link opportunity?
A sentence on one of your pages that already talks about the subject of another of your pages but does not link to it. Adding a link there helps readers go deeper and helps search engines find and understand the target page.
What is an orphan page?
A page that no other page on the site links to. It may still be in the sitemap, but readers cannot reach it by browsing and crawlers have fewer ways to find it. Here, orphan status is measured within the pages you supply or crawl.
How should I choose anchor text for internal links?
Use the words that describe the target page, as they already appear in the sentence - the tool suggests exactly that phrase. Avoid generic anchors such as "click here" or "read more", which say nothing about where the link goes.
How many pages can the crawl read?
Up to 25 public pages on the same site, fetched one at a time, following links from the start page. For bigger sites, export page data from a desktop crawler or your CMS and paste or drop the CSV, which accepts up to 500 pages.
Which CSV columns does the tool need?
A url column is required. Add title, text (the page's body text) and links (the URLs it links to, separated by spaces or |) for full results; an h1 column is used for the page's phrase when present.
Why are some mentions not suggested?
Either the source page already links to the target, the phrase appears only as part of a longer word, or it is written differently - "secateurs" instead of "pruning shears". List the other forms as target phrases to include them.
Last reviewed by the A2Z.Tools team against the sources listed above.
