An Ecommerce Internal Linking Audit You Can Act On
An ecommerce internal linking audit checks whether people and crawlers can reach the products and information the store wants to offer. Start with real journeys, then use crawl data to find gaps at scale. A spreadsheet of link counts alone does not tell you whether the links help anyone choose or buy.
Choose a representative category, a popular product, a new product and a useful buying guide. Add a discontinued item so the audit covers an awkward journey as well as the best-maintained part of the site.
Follow the journey before counting links
Begin at the homepage or a main navigation category. Can you reach the chosen product through ordinary links? Is the category name understandable? If the product is only discoverable by typing its exact name into the site search, record that as a navigation gap to investigate.
Repeat from the buying guide. Does the guide connect the advice to a relevant category or product, and does that destination still match the recommendation? Check the return route too: a useful product-selection guide should be discoverable where someone is making that decision.
Make a small issue register
| Finding | Evidence to capture | Useful next action |
|---|---|---|
| Isolated product | URL and missing category route | Add it to the appropriate maintained range |
| Broken destination | Source page and broken link | Correct the source link after checking intent |
| Misleading anchor | Link text and actual destination | Rewrite it to identify the destination honestly |
| Old recommendation | Guide passage and unavailable product | Update the advice or offer a relevant alternative |
| Duplicate URL paths | Linked variants of one destination | Review canonical and linking consistency |
Give each finding an owner and a scope. “Fix internal links” is not a release instruction. “Update these twelve buying-guide links to the current category URLs after checking the range” is concrete enough to implement and review.
Check the rendered links
Google’s link guidance explains the use of crawlable anchor links and descriptive anchor text. Inspect what the template actually outputs, particularly navigation, product cards and content loaded after interaction.
Do not assume that a visually clickable card provides the same crawlable link as a normal anchor with a destination. Equally, do not replace every functioning interface because a crawler report is incomplete: verify a sample in the rendered page before deciding the cause.
Prioritise by consequence
Fix a broken route to a key range before polishing an obscure footer label. Give priority to current products, important categories and advice that influences a purchase. A product with no useful inbound route deserves attention even if its description is excellent.
Avoid adding large blocks of irrelevant cross-links simply to increase the count. A link should have a reason where it appears. For category planning, use the category content brief to decide which destinations genuinely belong together.
Treat availability changes as maintenance
When stock or the catalogue changes, revisit guides and related-product modules. A link that once helped can become misleading after a discontinuation. Our out-of-stock product checklist separates temporary shortages from permanent removals and genuine replacements.
Keep a list of the templates that generate these links. Correcting one article manually will not fix a shared module that still points to an old destination across hundreds of products.
Verify the release and measure carefully
Revisit the original sample journeys after implementation. Confirm that the destination loads, the label makes sense and the product is in the expected range. Re-crawl the affected section and compare the specific issues, not just a site-wide score.
Record the release date and affected URLs for later reporting. Link changes can improve discovery and usability, but a ranking movement alone does not establish causation. Review search visibility alongside actual browsing and orders, keeping stock and seasonal changes in view.
Internal links are one part of a wider technical review. Our WooCommerce SEO checklist and BigCommerce SEO audit show where they fit on those platforms.