The recto blog
Internal linking, orphan pages, and getting found.
Every page you publish should be reachable and worth reaching. These guides show how to find the pages your site forgot and link them the way search engines — and readers — expect.
Pillar guide
Internal linking for SEO: the complete guide
Every page you publish is a promise that someone can reach it. Internal links are how you keep that promise — to readers and to search engines.
Guide
Anchor text examples that work
The fastest way to understand anchor text is to read good and bad anchors side by side. Here is a worked set — exact-match, partial, branded, and the generic anchors that throw the signal away — with the reason each one helps or hurts.
Guide
Anchor text: the complete guide
The clickable words of a link are one of the clearest signals search engines have about what a page is about. Choose them well and you sharpen every internal link you publish; choose them lazily and you waste the signal entirely.
Guide
Anchor text in HTML
Every link is an HTML anchor element, and the words between its tags are the anchor text. Get the markup right and your links are clear to readers, screen readers, and search engines alike. Here is the tag, the attributes, and the rules that matter.
Guide
Anchor text meaning, explained
Before you optimise anchor text, it helps to know exactly what the term names — and what it does not. This is the plain-language definition, the origin of the word, and how the anchor differs from the link, the URL, and the page it points to.
Guide
Automatic internal linking: when it works and when it doesn't
Automatic internal linking sounds like a solve: scan your site, find gaps, insert links. In practice, the three failure modes of blind automation—irrelevant targets, weak placement, and vanishing links—can undermine SEO before you notice.
Guide
Best internal linking tools
Most internal linking tools rank pages by link count. recto ranks by actual traffic loss. This guide compares seven tools on what matters: traffic-weighted ranking, paragraph-level placement, link persistence, and price.
Guide
Internal Linking Audit
Most internal linking audits count links and surface orphans. Learn the missing step—ranking them by lost traffic in Google Search Console—so you fix what matters first.
Guide
Internal linking checker
Learn how an internal link checker works, which tools to use, and how to read the results to prioritize fixes that actually improve your search traffic.
Guide
Internal linking analysis
An internal linking analysis finds the broken links in your site structure. Here is how to measure where your pages stand and which ones are stranded.
Guide
Real pillar page examples
Pillar pages aren't theory—they're proven to drive massive organic growth. Here are the real-world examples that show how structure, internal linking, and topic coverage combine to dominate search.
Guide
Pillar Pages 101
A pillar page anchors topical authority through a hub-and-spoke content cluster. Discover how 3PL Central achieved 900% traffic growth and Backlinko ranks for 29,000 keywords.
Guide
Site structure templates
A site structure determines how pages connect and how Google crawls them. We show three templates with real diagrams, internal linking patterns, and when each works.
Guide
Pillar pages and topic clusters
A pillar page is a comprehensive, SEO-focused hub that covers one broad topic and links to deeper cluster pages that explore subtopics. Without internal linking, a pillar fails.
Guide
Internal link importance
Internal links are how search engines discover your pages and understand your site structure. They also pass authority to pages that need it most.
Guide
How to add internal links in WordPress
Adding internal links is the fastest, most reliable SEO work you can do. Here are the three ways to do it on WordPress, and when to use each.
Guide
Find orphan pages in Google Search Console
An orphan page is a dead end to a search engine. Google Search Console shows you which pages it has found, but finding the ones with no internal links pointing to them takes a manual cross-reference. Here is exactly how to do it.
Guide
How to find orphan pages on your site
Orphan pages are published but invisible. They have no internal links, no readers, and almost no chance of ranking. Finding them is the first step to fixing your site's link structure.
Guide
How to fix orphan pages in WordPress
A page with no links pointing to it is invisible to search engines. On WordPress, it is surprisingly easy to publish that page and forget it.
Guide
How many internal links per page should you add
The question everyone asks has no fixed answer. Too few links and you strand your pages; too many and you dilute the signal every link carries.
Guide
How to interlink blog posts the right way
The hard part of interlinking blog posts is not the link itself — it is remembering which older posts should point to your new one, and which new pages your old posts should reach. Get that right and your whole archive becomes easier to find.
Guide
Anchor text for internal links: what matters and what doesn't
The words you choose for a link matter more than most site owners realize. An anchor is a label — for search engines and readers both. Get it right and you amplify a page's chances of ranking. Get it wrong and you waste the signal entirely.
Guide
Link Whisper alternative: why recto wins
Link Whisper is the dominant internal linking tool, but it is not the only choice. If you want to see which pages are actually close to ranking, skip the AI rewrites, and avoid a monthly bill, recto is built for you.
Guide
Find orphan pages with Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a powerful crawler that can map your entire site's link structure. It genuinely finds orphan pages — but the process requires analytics data and manual linking. Here is exactly how.