links.empty-anchor

What to change

A finding of this rule on a page carries the exact edits for that page: the markup it quotes, and what to write instead.

When it runs

Runs on every SEO audit: of a page, a crawl, a build directory or HTML. A warning is a problem that costs a page ranking, clicks or citations. Each finding takes 5 points off the page's score.

The severity here is the rule's usual one: a finding can be raised or lowered when the page gives a reason.

Run it, or skip it

Check a page for this rule alone, after a fix for instance:

npx @rivi-software/agentic-seo-check audit https://example.com --rule links.empty-anchor

Or from an assistant, with the MCP tool seo_audit_page:

{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "rules": [
    "links.empty-anchor"
  ]
}

To leave it out of an audit, pass --disable links.empty-anchor on the command, or disableRules: ["links.empty-anchor"] to a tool.

• Warninglinks.no-internalThe page has no internal links, so crawlers cannot reach other pages from it and it passes no authority onward.
• Infolinks.generic-anchor-textLinks whose text is generic ("click here", "read more", "learn more").
• Infolinks.uncrawlable-hrefAnchors whose href is "#", empty, or a javascript: URL. Crawlers cannot follow them.
• Warninglinks.hash-routeInternal links whose fragment is a route ("#/products", "#!/products"). Google ignores the fragment, so it cannot reach these views as pages of their own.
• Warninglinks.insecure-internalInternal links use http:// while the page is served over https://.
• Infolinks.nofollow-internalInternal links carry rel="nofollow".
• Infourl.uppercaseThe page's URL path has uppercase letters. Google treats /Page and /page as two URLs, so links that differ in case split signals or end in a 404.
• Infourl.underscoresThe page's URL path separates words with underscores; Google recommends hyphens.