Internal Links: Fix Underlinked Pages

On this page

• Find Underlinked Pages
• Run Crosslink
• What the Links Look Like
• Anchor Text Rules
• What Google's API Leak Revealed
• Preview Before Applying
• Verify Results
• AutoFix Muenchen Example
• When Not to Crosslink

CompareStack has 200 vendor profiles. The audit shows - 47 underlinked page(s) (<3 inbound links). That means 47 pages have fewer than 3 other pages linking to them. Google struggles to find and rank pages that the site itself barely references.

This guide shows how to find underlinked pages, fix them with the crosslink command, and verify the results.

Find Underlinked Pages

python -m wire.chief audit vendors

The HEALTH section shows the count:

The ACTION section lists the worst offenders:

Pages with 0 inbound links are orphans. Google can find them through the sitemap, but they receive no internal PageRank. Pages with 1-2 links exist in the link graph but are weakly connected.

Run Crosslink

python -m wire.chief crosslink vendors

Wire processes each underlinked page:

1. Reads the page content and identifies its topic
2. Scans all other pages in the topic for natural insertion points
3. Generates contextual links using AI, placed where they fit the surrounding text
4. Validates every link against the site directory. No links to pages that don't exist.

Minimal token usage, covered by your AI subscription. See pricing.

What the Links Look Like

Before crosslink, the betacorp vendor page mentions OCR processing but doesn't link to the acme-ocr page:

## Key Features

BetaCorp processes invoices, receipts, and purchase orders.
The OCR engine handles 47 languages with 96.2% accuracy
on the SROIE benchmark.

After crosslink:

## Key Features

BetaCorp processes invoices, receipts, and purchase orders.
The OCR engine handles 47 languages with 96.2% accuracy
on the SROIE benchmark, comparable to
[ACME OCR's multi-language pipeline](/vendors/acme-ocr/).

The link is contextual. It appears where the text naturally references something that another page covers in depth. It uses descriptive anchor text (not "click here" or "read more").

Anchor Text Rules

Wire follows strict anchor text rules from the styleguide. These rules exist because the evidence is strong:

Descriptive, 2-5 words. Zyppy's 23-million-link study found pages with exact-match anchor text receive 5x more organic traffic than pages without. The anchor tells Google what the destination page is about.

First mention only. Wire links the first mention of a topic, not every mention. Repeating the same link 5 times on a page adds noise, not signal.

Varied anchors across pages. seo.ai's study of 1,000+ sites found pages with high anchor text diversity ranked at position 1.3 on average versus 3.5 for low-diversity sites. If every page links to acme-ocr with the exact same anchor, vary it: "ACME's OCR engine", "ACME OCR benchmarks", "ACME's document processing".

What Google's API Leak Revealed

The 2024 API leak confirmed three internal linking signals:

anchorMismatchDemotion. An explicit ranking demotion for pages where inbound anchor text doesn't match the page's topic. Linking from a cooking page to a car insurance page with optimized anchor text can trigger this. Wire's crosslink only adds links between topically related pages within the same topic.

droppedLocalAnchorCount. Google counts how many internal link anchors it chose to ignore. Navigation links, footer links, and boilerplate links are dropped. Only contextual body links consistently count. Wire adds links inside article body text, not sidebars or footers.

homePageRank. The homepage has its own PageRank score. Fresh pages inherit it temporarily. Pages that never get internal links stay dependent on this inherited score. Crosslinking gives pages their own link equity.

Sources: iPullRank API leak analysis, Zyppy 23M links study.

Preview Before Applying

Use --dry-run to see what crosslink would add without saving:

python -m wire.chief crosslink vendors --dry-run

Wire writes .preview files and shows a diff for each page. Review the diffs to verify:

• Links point to real pages
• Anchor text is descriptive
• Links appear in natural positions (not forced into unrelated paragraphs)
• No duplicate links to the same destination

Verify Results

After crosslink completes, run the audit again:

python -m wire.chief audit vendors

Before:

After:

The 47 underlinked pages now have 3+ inbound links each. The HEALTH indicator flips from - to +.

AutoFix Muenchen Example

AutoFix has 45 service pages. The audit shows 6 underlinked pages:

After crosslink:

• The bremsen page now links to stossdaempfer ("Verschlissene Stoßdämpfer beeinträchtigen auch den Bremsweg." with a link to the stossdaempfer page)
• The motor page now links to zuendkerzen and lichtmaschine in the diagnostic section
• The getriebe page now links to kupplung where it discusses manual transmission wear

Each link makes sense in context. A reader on the bremsen page who cares about stopping distance would naturally want to know about shock absorbers. The link serves the reader and the search engine.

Total token usage: minimal (6 pages, each using minimal AI tokens).

When Not to Crosslink

Crosslink is not always the right fix:

Orphan pages with zero traffic. If a page has 0 inbound links AND 0 impressions AND other pages already cover its keywords, the audit flags it as a dead page, not an underlinked page. Dead pages should be merged or deleted, not crosslinked.

Pages blocked by overlap. If a page is pending merge or differentiation, crosslink skips it. Adding links to a page that's about to be merged wastes the API call. Fix overlaps first, then crosslink.

Pages touched within 28 days. Wire tracks when pages were last modified. Recently touched pages are skipped to avoid churn. If you need to force crosslink on a fresh page, remove the date: field from its frontmatter temporarily.

Related: SEO reference and workflow.

See the Guides overview for all Wire documentation.