Linked only from menus, headers and footers
What it is
Other pages on your site link to this page, but every one of those links sits in a menu, header or footer. No page links to it from its body text. The page can be reached, yet nothing in your content explains where it fits.
Why it matters
Template links repeat on every page with the same text, so they tell search engines little beyond the fact that the page exists. Links in content, with descriptive text and a sentence around them, show what a page covers and how it relates to the rest; Google recommends descriptive, relevant anchor text. Service, pricing and feature pages often end up here: linked from the menu, never mentioned in an article.
How Asky checks it
Asky maps the links between crawled pages from their raw HTML; JavaScript links are not seen. A link counts as navigation when the nearest <nav>, <header>, <footer>, <main>, <article> or <aside> around it is one of the first three, so a <header> inside an article counts as navigation. The page is reported when it has inlinks and none comes from content. Image-only links, self-links and links from pages outside your sitemap (the homepage aside) do not count. The homepage is exempt and error pages are skipped. It runs only in full-site audits with Link analysis on that reached every page without blocks or errors.
Reported as an opportunity with medium severity.
How to fix it
- Link to the page from the body text of at least three related pages. One or two linking pages clears this finding but is then reported as too few inlinks.
- Use link text that describes the page, such as “compare our plans” rather than “click here”, which is reported as generic link text.
- Check the markup of blocks meant as content: a related-articles list or breadcrumb placed inside
<footer>or<nav>counts as navigation. With<main>,<article>or<aside>as the nearest of these, it counts as content. - Make sure the linking pages are in your sitemap; links from pages outside it do not count, except from the homepage.
- Keep the menu link as well: it helps visitors, it just does not count as content.
- A full-site audit is needed to re-check, because audits of selected pages skip this rule.
Example
https://example.com/pricing is linked from the main menu on every page and from nowhere else. A sentence in three relevant articles adds the missing context:
<!-- On https://example.com/blog/pricing-guide -->
<p>You can <a href="/pricing">compare our plans side by side</a> before you decide.</p>