Joe Robinson
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Internal link mapping: How to create a visual link map

A process to map out the internal linking structure of a website and apply statistical analysis to find stronger pages to link from, and those that have too few incoming links.

This is a process to map out the internal linking structure of a website and apply statistical analysis to find stronger pages to link from, and those that have too few incoming links.

A well thought out internal linking strategy can give a website a better chance of ranking well, compared to a site with a lot of dead ends and poor access to pages.

We can shape our website’s internal architecture so that all pages are accessible within just a few clicks, creating a great user experience and keeping things simple and quick for Google to crawl.

What you’ll need to follow this tutorial:

  1. Ahrefs
  2. Screaming Frog
  3. Gephi
  4. A spreadsheet – I’m using Google Sheets

The first thing we need to do is crawl the site and gather all the internal links.

Open up Screaming Frog, but before entering your URL and starting the crawl, let’s change a couple of configuration options so we only bring back the results that will help us improve our internal linking.

In the top menu, go to Configuration then choose Spider. This opens a box. Because we only want the internal links going to pages, we’re only going to check a few of the options.

It’s also possible to only collect links within the content sections of pages by using the Screaming frog custom extraction feature. This can be a little tricky as the code you need will depend on how your site is set up.

Now enter your domain and hit Start. When it’s done, go to Bulk Export and choose All Inlinks.

Open up the .csv you’ve just created and delete the first column, then rename column B Target. Delete all the other columns except Source and Target.

Now we want to clean up the spreadsheet a bit:

  1. Delete row one.
  2. Select the new row one, then go to View, Freeze, 1 row.
  3. Sort column A by A-Z.
  4. Delete all the rows that don’t have AHREF in column A.
  5. Now delete all columns except B and C.
  6. Rename Column B Target.

Now your spreadsheet only contains two columns, and shows all the links from each page (Source) to its destination (Target).

2. Gather URL ratings

Now we want to get the URL rating for each of the pages on the site. Go to Ahrefs Site Explorer and enter your domain. In the left toolbar, under Pages, click Best by Links. Then choose Export, Full Export.

Now we’re going to put all the URL ratings and internal link data into a single spreadsheet.

Open your new file and delete all columns except Page URL and URL ratings. Now copy those two columns into your Screaming Frog spreadsheet in columns C and D.

Now:

  1. Insert one new column to the right of column A, and name it URL rating.
  2. Paste this exact formula into cell B2: =VLOOKUP(A:A,D:DD,2,false)
  3. Press enter.
  4. Double click the little blue square at the bottom right of B2 to copy the formula into the whole column.
  5. Export as CSV.
  1. Open Gephi and create a new project.
  2. Go to File, Import Spreadsheet, and navigate to your .csv file.
  3. Choose Edges Table, and click next.
  4. In the next dialogue box, tick the URL rating box and choose Float.
  5. Untick Page URL and URL rating (desc).

What you have now is a scrambled mess of nodes and edges.

  • Node = a small circle that represents a page on your site.
  • Edge = an arrow that represents an internal link.

In the toolbar on the left, choose a layout from the drop-down menu (e.g., Fruchtman Reingold) and click run.

In the appearance section of the Overview tab:

  • Click Nodes, then the three circles (top right), choose Ranking, then In-Degree.
  • Click the Edges tab, choose the color palette, click Ranking, and choose URL rating.

Now go to the Data Laboratory tab, click Copy data to other column, select ID, then copy to Label. Finally, go to the Preview tab, select Show Labels, and click refresh.

The larger nodes have more incoming internal links, and the darker colored nodes have more incoming external links (from the Ahrefs URL rating).

Size = Internal page rank

Internal page rank is the likelihood of someone landing on a given page if randomly clicking links. The most linked to pages will tend to be larger.

Size = In Degree

In Degree is the relative strength of a page determined by the number of incoming internal links.

Size = Betweenness Centrality

Measures how often each page acts as a bridge between other pages. High betweenness centrality pages are good choices for building external backlinks.

Overall strength

Combine the top 50 pages for each of the three metrics to determine the strongest pages for outgoing internal links, and identify the weakest pages that need more incoming links.

EXTRA – Add your map to your website

Go to Tools, Plugins, and install Sigma Exporter. You can then export as a Sigma.js template to upload the “Network” folder to your site.

Did you find this useful?

Let me know and I’ll add more fun SEO stuff you can try.