You publish a helpful article, add it to the sitemap, and move on. Months later, a customer asks the exact question it answers. You realize the article is hard to find from anywhere on the website.
Being on a sitemap is not the same as being part of a useful reader journey. People follow menus, article links and page recommendations. Those routes need attention too.
A site structure check can show where to investigate. The important part is knowing which observations are real problems and which are only gaps in a small sample.
Pick a journey, not a link-count target
Write down one task a visitor should be able to complete. For a hypothetical invoicing app, it might be: “Understand how to send a first invoice, then find the product page and decide whether to try it.”
Open the homepage and follow the links you expect a newcomer to use. Can you find the relevant guide? Does it point to accurate product details? Do the links work on a phone?
This short manual check provides context for the report. A page with many links can still be confusing. A focused page with only a few good links can work well. There is no useful universal number to chase.
Understand the sample before the findings
Open SEO Dispatcher's site structure checker and enter your website address.
The tool uses a readable sitemap to select a bounded sample of pages, up to eight eligible page responses. It inspects server-delivered HTML, observed internal destinations, titles and indexing instructions. It does not render an interactive browser or crawl every route from the homepage.
If it cannot read a usable sitemap, start with the sitemap guide. A missing sample is not a passing structure report.
Use the inspected URLs and count to understand coverage. A result for eight pages on a website with hundreds of URLs is a shortlist for investigation, not a complete site audit.
Read “no observed links” carefully
A candidate with no incoming links in the sample may deserve attention. It is not automatically an orphan page: a page with no internal links pointing to it anywhere on the site.
The link could exist on an unsampled article, a navigation page or content inserted by JavaScript. A small HTML sample cannot prove its absence across the whole website.
For each candidate you care about:
- Open the live page and confirm that it is useful and meant to be public.
- Check the relevant menu, category page and related articles manually.
- Search your content source or use a wider crawler if you need a complete answer.
- Add a link only where a reader would benefit from following it.
Google's crawlable-link guidance explains why ordinary links with destinations and meaningful text matter. The report can identify links in the fetched HTML, but the human reading decision is still yours.
Turn the observations into different kinds of work
Not every finding needs the same fix. These examples are illustrative, not results from a customer site:
| Observation | What it does not establish | What to check next |
|---|---|---|
| A guide has no incoming link in the sample | No page anywhere links to it | Check its category, navigation and closely related articles. |
| Several pages share “Help” as their title | Their full content is duplicated | Open them; give distinct pages clear titles if the current labels are unhelpful. |
| A sampled destination returns an error | The whole linking structure is broken | Confirm that destination and repair the affected source links. |
| A path contains several folders | Readers need that many clicks to reach it | Follow the actual navigation; URL folder depth and click distance are different. |
A public guide has noindex | The restriction must be accidental | Establish the intended audience and indexing policy before changing it. |
Do not rename stable URLs simply to make a depth number smaller. That creates redirect and link-maintenance work without necessarily helping anyone navigate.
Likewise, repeated titles are a reason to review the page labels, not proof of copied content. The checker is not comparing the complete meaning of every page.
Repair one reader path
For the invoicing app, suppose the first-invoice guide exists but the onboarding article never mentions it. A useful change might be a link beside the step where the reader needs help creating the invoice.
Choose link text that names the destination's benefit, such as “create your first invoice,” rather than “click here.” Open the target and make sure it actually delivers that answer. A descriptive link to an unrelated page is still a bad link.
If the guide describes an old workflow, update it before directing more people there. If the destination moved, link to the current preferred URL rather than relying unnecessarily on a redirect. If a page was intentionally removed, choose a relevant replacement only when one exists.
For the placement and writing side of this work, read how to link your website pages together. That guide explains adding links; this one is about interpreting an audit and confirming what needs repair.
Write a repair note someone can act on
Keep the location, evidence and intended result together:
The first-invoice guide did not receive an incoming link from the sampled pages. I also checked the onboarding article manually and found no link at the invoice-creation step. Please add a relevant link there, verify the guide is current, and test the published destination. This is a confirmed gap in that journey, not proof the guide is orphaned across the whole site.
That note is much better than “increase internal linking.” It does not ask someone to sprinkle links around to satisfy a number.
SEO Dispatcher helps at two levels. The free report provides a small public-page sample. The paid workspace can help you review relevant article updates and prepare content changes in your site's publishing format. It does not automatically redesign navigation or replace a comprehensive crawl.
Verify the journey, not just the checklist
After publication, follow the path again from the source page. Check the destination, link wording and any nearby context. Confirm that the sitemap and preferred address still agree if a URL changed.
Free checks have three accepted runs total per user and domain across all tools, with no reset. Signing in reveals additional evidence from the same report, not extra attempts. An accepted failure still counts; reopening the saved report within its 24-hour availability does not. Anonymous users on a shared network may share the allowance.
Save your observations before the report expires. Use another run to investigate a meaningful change, not to chase a larger link count. The goal is a visitor reaching a useful answer without getting lost.