
Common Local SEO Topical Authority Mistakes
August 21, 2025Internal linking isn’t glamorous, but it’s one of the most powerful levers in SEO. It’s how you pass authority from one page to another, how you show Google your topic clusters, and how you help users navigate your site without friction. The tricky part isn’t knowing that internal links matter – it’s figuring out how to see them. This is where tools come in to help you. In this post, we will cover our picks for the top internal link visualization tools well worth considering!
If you’ve ever looked at your site and thought, “I know we have hundreds of articles, but I can’t tell if they’re actually connected,” then you’ve run into the classic problem of invisible structure. Spreadsheets and export reports give you the numbers, but they don’t always give you the picture. That’s where internal link visualization tools come in.
These tools let you map your site’s internal structure — showing which pages are connected, which are floating in isolation, and where authority is pooling. Some focus on lightweight, editorial-friendly visuals. Others offer enterprise-scale crawling, log file integrations, and dashboards that corporate SEO teams can show to stakeholders. Choosing the right tool comes down to your budget, site size, and workflow needs.
Below we’ll walk through the leading internal link visualization tools on the market. For each one, I’ll explain what it does, why you’d use it, where it shines, where it falls short, and how much it costs. By the end, you’ll know exactly which tool fits your needs — whether you’re a solo blogger trying to boost topical clusters, or an enterprise SEO team monitoring millions of URLs.
1. SEO Corner Internal Link Visualization Tool (Free)

If you want to get started without spending a penny or installing software, the SEO Corner Internal Link Visualization Tool is one of the simplest ways to see your internal linking structure. Unlike heavy-duty crawlers that need setup, logins, or downloads, this tool runs straight in your browser. You paste in a site (or subfolder like /blog/), let it crawl, and you instantly see a network graph of your pages.
The beauty of this tool is its simplicity. Each page is shown as a node, each link as a connecting line. Orphaned pages appear as lonely dots. Hubs — like pillar pages or nav-heavy URLs — stand out as large, well-connected nodes. You can hover to see in-link and out-link counts, then export a list of underlinked or deep pages. For small and mid-sized sites, this gives you everything you need to run a sprint: spot thin clusters, add links to strengthen your pillars, re-crawl, and confirm the improvement.
Of course, it’s not perfect. It’s not built for giant sites with tens of thousands of URLs, and it struggles with heavy JavaScript-based menus. There’s also no long-term reporting or trend comparison — if you want to track progress over months, you’ll need to save and compare exports manually.
- Pros: Zero friction, genuinely visual, perfect for fast editorial sprints.
- Cons: Not enterprise-ready, limited with JS navigation, no historical graphs.
- Pricing: Free.
Best for: Small businesses, content teams, and bloggers who want quick clarity without opening their wallets.
2. Screaming Frog SEO Spider ($279/year)

Screaming Frog is the Swiss Army knife of SEO crawling. If you’ve been in SEO for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of it — and for good reason. It’s a desktop application that crawls websites like Googlebot, giving you detailed data on everything from titles and metadata to redirects, canonicals, and — crucially — internal links.
For internal linking, Screaming Frog provides both grid-level reports and visual diagrams. You can pull a list of every URL, its in-links, out-links, anchor text, and depth. You can filter for orphaned pages (by uploading a sitemap or analytics list). And you can use its crawl diagram and force-directed graphs to get a quick visual overview. While the graphs aren’t as polished as Sitebulb’s, they’re still incredibly useful for spotting disconnected clusters or over-deep sections.
Where Screaming Frog really shines is scale and control. You can crawl hundreds of thousands of URLs (limited only by your machine’s resources), render JavaScript-heavy sites, and configure the crawl in infinite ways (exclude folders, follow specific parameters, simulate mobile crawls). You can also compare crawls to see how your internal linking changed after a redesign.
The flip side is that Screaming Frog can feel intimidating to beginners. The interface is utilitarian, and while the data is powerful, it often requires exporting to Excel or Google Sheets for true analysis. It’s not the tool you’d hand to a non-SEO stakeholder for a pretty graph — but it’s the one you’d trust for a serious audit.
- Pros: Handles large sites, JS rendering, unparalleled export capabilities.
- Cons: Visuals are functional, not flashy; steep learning curve.
- Pricing: Free for up to 500 URLs; $279/year for the paid license.
Best for: SEOs who want precision, scalability, and raw data they can slice however they want.
3. Sitebulb (Desktop, $18–42/month)

Sitebulb is often described as “Screaming Frog with prettier visuals” — but that undersells it. It’s a desktop crawler that combines robust crawling with some of the best visualization options in the industry. Where Screaming Frog gives you tables and graphs, Sitebulb gives you interactive maps that make your site structure crystal clear.
Run a crawl in Sitebulb and you’ll see a visual sitemap, crawl path diagrams, link graphs, and hierarchical flow charts. It also provides “Hints” — automated recommendations like “these important pages are too deep” or “link equity flow is uneven.” This makes it a great tool not just for diagnosing issues, but for explaining them to clients or stakeholders who may not understand why an orphaned page is a problem until they see it floating alone on the graph.
Compared to cloud tools, Sitebulb is still desktop-based, which means large crawls can be demanding on your machine. But for most small and medium-sized sites (and many large ones), it’s more than capable. The pricing is also very accessible, with plans starting at just $13/month.
- Pros: Stunning visuals, strong link equity insights, stakeholder-friendly.
- Cons: Desktop-based, resource-hungry on very large sites.
- Pricing: From $18/month (Lite) to $42/month (Pro).
Best for: Agencies and consultants who need both deep insights and presentation-ready visuals.
4. Ahrefs Site Audit (from $99/month)

If Screaming Frog and Sitebulb are power tools, Ahrefs Site Audit is the polished dashboard. As part of Ahrefs’ all-in-one SEO suite, its Site Audit tool runs in the cloud, meaning you don’t need to tie up your own computer to run large crawls.
For internal linking, Ahrefs offers clear reports on orphaned pages, link depth, and internal link opportunities (e.g., “this page ranks but has few in-links, consider adding more”). While it doesn’t give you flashy graphs, its list and chart-based reports are perfect for ongoing monitoring. You can schedule audits weekly or monthly, and see progress over time.
The real power is in the ecosystem: you can cross-reference crawl data with Ahrefs’ keyword rankings and backlink data to decide which pages deserve more internal links. For example, if a page is ranking on page 2 for a valuable keyword but has only 2 in-links, you know exactly where to act.
The trade-off is cost. Ahrefs isn’t cheap, and you’re paying for the whole suite (keywords, backlinks, content explorer) — not just the audit tool. For many, that’s a positive, since it consolidates multiple needs. But if you only want link visualization, this is probably overkill.
- Pros: Cloud-based, easy scheduling, integrates with broader Ahrefs data.
- Cons: Expensive if you only want internal link analysis, limited graph visuals.
- Pricing: Starts at $99/month.
Best for: SEO teams who already use Ahrefs and want to fold internal link auditing into their existing workflow.
5. Semrush Site Audit (from $139/month)

Much like Ahrefs, Semrush Site Audit is part of a wider SEO suite. It crawls your site in the cloud, identifies internal linking issues (broken links, orphans, pages too deep), and provides user-friendly dashboards to track improvements.
Semrush leans more into all-in-one marketing workflows, so its reports are very digestible and designed for non-technical users. You won’t get the same depth of visualization as Sitebulb, but you’ll get actionable insights like “link this page from your higher authority posts” or “these key pages are buried too deep.”
Pricing is quite expensive, starting at $139/month, but again you’re paying for the whole suite (keywords, competitor research, content marketing tools).
- Pros: Simple dashboards, part of an all-in-one suite, easy multi-site management.
- Cons: Less granular for advanced SEOs, visuals are report-style not graph-style.
- Pricing: From $139/month.
Best for: Marketing teams already embedded in Semrush who want internal link monitoring without adopting a new tool.
6. JetOctopus (from $337+/month)

If you’re working with large, complex sites, JetOctopus is one of the most impressive cloud crawlers on the market. Unlike desktop tools, it runs entirely in the browser and can handle hundreds of thousands (or millions) of URLs.
For internal linking, JetOctopus shines when combined with log file analysis. You don’t just see how your site is structured — you see how Googlebot actually crawls it. That means you can diagnose wasted crawl budget (e.g., bots spending too much time on deep, unimportant pages) and reroute internal linking to surface key content.
Its dashboards are clean and actionable, with clear reports on link depth, orphaned pages, and crawl frequency. It’s not as “pretty” as Sitebulb’s visual maps, but it’s incredibly practical for operational SEO at scale.
- Pros: Handles very large sites, log integration, clean dashboards.
- Cons: Requires some setup and process maturity, less visual wow-factor.
- Pricing: Starts at around $337/month. Quite pricey indeed!
Best for: Large e-commerce, publishers, or marketplaces who need scale + logs to fine-tune crawl efficiency.
7. OnCrawl (Cloud, $200–500+/month)

OnCrawl is an enterprise-grade SEO crawler designed to combine internal linking analysis with performance data. It integrates crawl data, Google Search Console, analytics, and log files to give you a holistic view of how your site is crawled and ranked.
For internal linking, OnCrawl goes deep. You can segment your site into sections (e.g., categories, templates), see how link equity flows between them, and correlate changes with ranking improvements. For enterprise SEOs, this means you can not only fix problems, but also prove ROI: “we reduced average depth for these 500 pages, and traffic rose 20%.”
The downside is price and complexity. OnCrawl isn’t designed for bloggers or small businesses — it’s for SEO teams at scale.
- Pros: Enterprise-grade, powerful segmentation, correlation with performance.
- Cons: Expensive, steep learning curve.
- Pricing: Typically $200–500+/month, depending on site size.
Best for: Enterprise SEO teams needing to connect internal link changes directly to performance outcomes.
8. Lumar (formerly Deepcrawl, Enterprise Pricing)

Lumar (previously Deepcrawl) positions itself as an SEO governance platform. It’s less about one-off audits and more about continuous monitoring. For internal linking, that means you can set rules (“all key product pages must be ≤3 clicks from home”) and have Lumar flag issues automatically.
It’s built for very large sites and corporate teams who need compliance and reporting at scale. Pricing is enterprise-level, so unless you’re managing hundreds of thousands of URLs, it’s overkill.
- Pros: Scales massively, governance-focused, great for ongoing monitoring.
- Cons: Expensive, not built for smaller sites.
- Pricing: Enterprise-only, typically several hundred dollars/month and up.
Best for: Enterprises who need internal link monitoring as part of broader SEO governance.
9. Link Whisper (WordPress Plugin, $97/year)

Finally, a very different kind of tool: Link Whisper is a WordPress plugin that suggests internal links while you’re writing. Instead of crawling your site and producing graphs, it integrates directly into your CMS, highlighting opportunities to link to existing posts.
This is invaluable for content-heavy sites on WordPress, because it removes the friction between diagnosing and fixing. You can also bulk-add links to older posts, and get per-post reports on how many in-links and out-links each page has.
It’s not a visualization tool in the traditional sense, but it solves a practical problem: how to operationalize internal linking in the writing workflow.
- Pros: Inline suggestions, fast wins, easy for non-technical users.
- Cons: WordPress-only, no site-wide visual maps.
- Pricing: Starts at $97/year for 1 site.
Best for: Bloggers, publishers, and small teams on WordPress who want to build internal linking into their daily editorial process.
Conclusion
There’s no single “best” internal link visualization tool. The right one depends on your budget, scale, and workflow.
- On a tight budget? Start with SEO Corner (free) and Link Whisper ($77/year).
- Small to mid-sized sites? Screaming Frog or Sitebulb offer the best bang for buck.
- Larger teams already using suites? Ahrefs or Semrush keep things simple.
- Enterprise? JetOctopus, OnCrawl, or Lumar give you the firepower (and price tag) you need.
The key is to stop flying blind. Once you can see your internal link structure, you can systematically strengthen clusters, reduce crawl depth, and route authority to the pages that matter. That’s what turns scattered content into a genuine topical authority site.