Audit pages for too few internal links in their main content and suggest links to related pages. Separate body links from shared navigation, add contextual links or related-article sections, and verify that the rendered pages include them.
Use when auditing a site's internal link graph for dead-end pages, suggesting related-content links to add to thin or standalone pages, or reviewing CMS templates that produce link-free content pages.
Run score Not tested
See how to installdead-end-pages finds pages with too few internal links in their main content and helps add paths to related content. It counts links to other pages on the same domain within the rendered <main> or <article> element and flags pages with fewer than two distinct destinations. For each page, it finds two to five relevant pages and suggests links within the text or a related-articles section.
Use it to guide readers from a standalone article to their next page, or to review CMS templates where links in the main content tend to be missing. It helps examine connections across a site through both readers’ navigation paths and the paths search-engine crawlers follow through links.
Navigation, headers, and footers shared across all pages do not count toward related links in the main content. After changes, crawl again to verify that the links are present in the HTML structure used by the browser to display the page.
This overview was written by AI (OpenAI Codex) from the public SKILL.md. Check the original below for the exact behavior.
AI checked the SKILL.md for operations that need care and for setup requirements. The score comes only from actually running the skill (hands-on test).
Not counted in the score. Rated by AI (OpenAI Codex) as of Oct 23, 2026. Treat it as a guide and read the original before installing.
Review the instructions the agent will receive before you install.
Googlebot follows links to discover and re-crawl pages. A page with no outgoing internal links stops the crawler from reaching the rest of your site from that point and leaves users with nowhere logical to go, increasing bounce rate.
For each page, count the number of <a href> links pointing to other pages on the same domain (exclude navigation/header/footer if they are templated identically across all pages). Flag any page with zero or fewer than two unique internal links in the main content body (<main> or <article> element).
Internal links are the edges of your site's graph. Crawlers navigate by following links; a page with no outgoing links is a node with no edges leading forward. This prevents Googlebot from discovering linked pages during a crawl initiated from that dead end, and it signals to users that there is nothing more to explore.
Parse the <main> or <article> element of each rendered page. Count <a href> tags pointing to same-domain URLs. Flag pages with fewer than 2 such links. Exclude navigation, header, and footer elements that are shared across all pages, as these do not count as contextual internal links.
For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance,
see references/rule.md.
Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/rules/seo/dead-end-pages
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