What is a link score?

A link score is a metric assigned to an eligible URL based on its quality and relevance relative to other pages on a website. Screaming Frog ranks URLs from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the better. So, low-scoring URLs mean they need more links from other pages within your domain.

Does Screaming Frog check for broken links?

ou can use Screaming Frog to check for broken links on your website’s pages. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to do it: Open Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider, paste the website you want to crawl on the designated box and choose “Start.” Once done, click “Response Code” and select “Client Error 4XX” on the drop-down menu to filter broken links on the data set. Lastly, locate which page has broken links by clicking “Inlinks” (on the lower screen) after choosing one of the URLs with reported issues. Spider SEO will display the broken link under the “To” while “From” will show the specific page where the broken link is anchored. Export the data as a CSV by clicking “Bulk Export,” “Response Codes,” “Client Error (4XX) Inlinks”, and “Export.” You can even identify which specific anchor texts have the faulty hyperlink for more convenience.

Improve Your Internal Link Building Strategy With Link Score (Screaming Frog)

Do you find your content and product pages failing despite the optimization and SEO strategies you have in place? Then you’re probably looking at internal linking issues.

As you know, search engines discover pages through links. However, some tend to become hyper-focused on their external link-building efforts and miss out on link opportunities from their own website.

In this post, we’re talking about Link Score, a valuable internal linking optimization tool provided by Screaming Fog. Read, and learn how to use Link Score to better your website’s internal link structuring and boost your SERP performance!

Table of Contents

What Is Screaming Frog’s Link Score?
- How Does Screaming Frog’s Link Scoring Work?
- Advantages of Utilizing Screaming Frog’s Link Score Algorithm
How Does Improving Internal Linking Help Your SEO?
FAQs
Final Thoughts

What Is Screaming Frog’s Link Score?

Screaming Fog is an advanced SEO tool offering practical features to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Most of their features let you analyze and optimize content, including crawling and gathering data for all SEO purposes.

The tenth version of Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider introduces a brand-new feature called the Link Score, an algorithm that maps out your site’s internal linking architecture. It works like Google’s PageRank, only at your disposal.

How Does Screaming Frog’s Link Scoring Work?

Generally, link score is a metric used to measure the value and evaluate the authority of your URLs, typically backlinks or inbound links.

Screaming Frog’s Link Score algorithm, however, quantitatively assesses your website’s internal link distribution, by assigning numeric values to your URLs between 0 and 100.

Metric scores are passed between URLs depending on their relationship to each other. The closer the score is to the highest parameter, 100, the stronger the page.

That said, not all on-page links are considered eligible for ranking by the algorithm.

Only those that point within the domain (internal), not redirects, and are not canonicalized are included in the calculation. The URLs should also be the target of a redirect, canonical, or linked to by an AHREF.

A link referencing itself will not receive any scorelink points. They should be unique and followable, without rel=’nofollow’ attributes, which prompts the URL’s metric score to evaporate.

The Link Score algorithm works by default alongside Screaming Frog’s crawl analysis feature. You can view its results under the “Link Score” column in the “Internal” links directories.

Users can turn the Link Score algorithm on or off by navigating the upper menu, clicking “Configuration,” and toggling the respective check box.

Advantages of Utilizing Screaming Frog’s Link Score Algorithm

Utilizing Screaming Frog’s Link Score algorithm helps improve your site’s internal infrastructure. By assigning scores, you can visualize your website’s local linking distribution and identify weak pages that might benefit from more internal links.

Simply put, it tells you if a page is over or under-linked by looking at the Link Score.

A low internal link count for your key pages means they won’t receive as much equity, which is a crucial ranking factor for search engines. If you want to boost organic traffic in specific URLs of your site, you don’t want them scoring low in Link Score.

You can use the algorithm’s data to understand how your site’s internal link equity is distributed. From there, you can uncover common internal linking mistakes, such as broken links or spammy pages with too many hyperlinks.

Link Score can be a positive tool for enhancing your website’s equity flow, ensuring your valuable pages receive as much visibility as you intended.

How Does Improving Internal Linking Help Your SEO?

High-quality external links remain the most crucial source of ranking power, improving your domain authority. However, internal links are also important to your site’s SEO performance for several reasons.

Your internal linking methods help search engines understand your domain’s structure. That is, it provides context to Google on how different pages on your website relate content-wise.

A solid internal structure helps the search engine crawl and index your pages. Think of them as your site’s signposts. They guide crawl bots to pages you want Google to discover and rank.

Additionally, internal links allow you to pass authority between your website’s pages. If you have a high-performing page with many inbound links, you can pass its authority to other pages on your site by linking to them internally.

Another reason you want better internal linking infrastructure is improved user experience. More than rankings, your audience’s experience with your site will ultimately be what improves dwell time and click-through rates.

Providing useful and related content is one way internal links improve user engagement. For example, linking a URL about “the best PC brands” on a page about “PC builds” will increase the chances of the readers clicking.

FAQs

What is a link score?
A link score is a metric assigned to an eligible URL based on its quality and relevance relative to other pages on a website. Screaming Frog ranks URLs from 0 to 100.

The higher the score, the better. So, low-scoring URLs mean they need more links from other pages within your domain.
Does Screaming Frog check for broken links?
ou can use Screaming Frog to check for broken links on your website’s pages. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to do it:
1. Open Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider, paste the website you want to crawl on the designated box and choose “Start.”
2. Once done, click “Response Code” and select “Client Error 4XX” on the drop-down menu to filter broken links on the data set.
3. Lastly, locate which page has broken links by clicking “Inlinks” (on the lower screen) after choosing one of the URLs with reported issues.
4. Spider SEO will display the broken link under the “To” while “From” will show the specific page where the broken link is anchored.
5. Export the data as a CSV by clicking “Bulk Export,” “Response Codes,” “Client Error (4XX) Inlinks”, and “Export.”
You can even identify which specific anchor texts have the faulty hyperlink for more convenience.

Final Thoughts

While undervalued by many, internal linking is essential to your SEO success. Done correctly, it creates a valuable network of pages within your website that helps users and search engines make sense of what you’re offering.

Screaming Fog’s Link Score algorithm is a great way to improve your site’s infrastructure. By visualizing your internal equity distribution, you can identify superb linking opportunities within your website and maximize your SEO efforts!

Published on: 2024-07-15
Updated on: 2024-07-17

Isaac Adams-Hands

Isaac Adams-Hands is the SEO Director at SEO North, a company that provides Search Engine Optimization services. As an SEO Professional, Isaac has considerable expertise in On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and Technical SEO, which gives him a leg up against the competition.