Keeping track of your internal and external links is one of the easiest ways to spot SEO opportunities and strengthen your website’s performance. Instead of guessing where your links are — or if you have enough — Rank Math’s Link Counter gives you a clear overview right from your dashboard.
In this knowledgebase article, we’ll take a closer look at how Rank Math’s Link Counter works, where you can find it, and why it’s such a valuable feature for your SEO efforts.
1 The Importance of Links in SEO
It is widely accepted that links are an incredibly important ranking factor.
If your content earned links from a number of great websites that are frequently visited, this is useful in a whole range of ways. Referral traffic, brand recognition, and improving page authority (meaning your content is more likely to rank in search as well as perform better in other ways).
Link building is crucial for a website’s success because it directly impacts search engine rankings. Most users tend to click on the top three results, and without backlinks, ranking high can be a challenge.
The good news is that if your content is already strong, earning backlinks becomes much easier. With quality content on your site, link building becomes a more natural process as others are likely to link to your website independently.
2 The Benefits of Link Building
Here are some of the most notable benefits of link building:
- Links help to increase the visibility of your posts/pages in the search results.
- Links help boost website traffic.
- Link building also helps to index your posts/pages faster.
- Last but not least, link building is considered one of the most important factors of SEO.
3 Rank Math’s Link Counter
In the Posts or Pages section of your WordPress dashboard, you’ll notice Rank Math’s Link Counter feature. To find it, simply go to WordPress Dashboard → Posts (or Pages), and you’ll see the link counter options displayed there, as shown below:
The link counter in Rank Math keeps track of the following links:
- Internal Links: Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. In the above image, there are 10 internal links.
- External Links: External links are the links that point to other pages on a different domain. There are 8 external links in the above image.
- Incoming Links: Incoming links are the links pointing to the current post from other posts/pages on the same website. There are 8 incoming links in the above image.
The link counter helps to improve the structure of your website and also helps the search engines to navigate your posts/pages easily.
4 Reset Internal Links Data
If the number of the links isn’t correct, then you can reset them from Rank Math SEO → Status & Tools → Database Tools. In the database tools, click on Delete Internal Links Data, and this can fix the issue. Note that you’ll have to enable the Advanced Mode, and these settings will be available.
Note: Once you reset the internal links count, you’d need to open and save each post again through your browser for Rank Math to count the links.
If your inflated internal links data doesn’t fix after reset, or you don’t see any internal links, then please open a support ticket here.
Rank Math makes it extremely easy to keep track of internal links and make sure you aren’t linking to too many sites from a single page – but if you still have any questions, feel free to contact our support team, who are available 24/7 and more than happy to help.