🔗Link Analysis
How Hugo evaluates internal and external links, anchor text quality, nofollow usage, and overall link health for your pages.
Links are the connective tissue of the web. Internal links distribute authority throughout your site, while external links provide context and credibility.[1] Hugo's link analysis runs 5 checks that contribute 10% to your main page score.
Internal Links
Internal Links (links)
External Links
Linking to authoritative external sources signals to search engines that your content is well-researched.[1] Hugo checks for the presence of external links — having at least one is a passing check.
Anchor Text Quality
The clickable text of a link (anchor text) provides context about the linked page.[2] Hugo checks for empty anchor text, which provides no value to users or search engines.
Use descriptive anchor text that tells users what they'll find when they click.[2] Avoid generic phrases like "click here" or "read more" — instead use meaningful text like "our SEO analysis guide".
Nofollow Usage
The rel="nofollow" attribute tells search engines not to pass link equity to the target URL.[3] While appropriate for user-generated content and advertisements, overuse can harm your SEO by preventing internal link equity flow.
Nofollow Ratio (% nofollow)
References
- [1]Google Search Central — Links best practices — developers.google.com
- [2]Google Search Central — Write good link text — developers.google.com
- [3]Google Search Central — Qualify your outbound links — developers.google.com
- [4]Google Search Central — How Google crawls the web (link discovery) — developers.google.com