Give every page four links from the body of other pages
Nav and footer links sit on every page and separate nothing. Links written into the prose are the ones that carry — and vary the words you link on, because the same anchor repeated reads as a template. Read each anchor inside its own sentence: one that promises something the destination does not contain costs you the click and the reader.
Step 3.3.5
Time: 2h
Done when
Count, for each indexable page, how many DISTINCT other pages link to it from their body — strip nav, header and footer first, or every page scores the same and the number means nothing. Report how many pages fall below four. Re-run before believing it: a transient fetch failure reads exactly like a missing link. (Proof: a count.)
If this is a change to your product
- What must become true
- Every indexable page has at least four body links pointing at it from other pages.
- Where it usually lives
- Not the nav. A section index gives its children one link each and no more, so the shortfall is always in the long tail — related-item blocks on leaf pages, and links from body prose into siblings.
- The trap
- An index page linking its children is one link, not four, and it is the same one for all of them. A library of 27 pages reachable only from its own index scores 1 across the board and looks fine in a click-depth check.