# When Every Link To /Pricing Says 'Pricing' — Internal Anchor Over-Optimization

External anchor-text over-optimization is a known backlink-manipulation signal. Internal anchor-text over-optimization is the same pattern on your own site — every link to /pricing saying 'pricing' with zero variation. Shannon entropy measures it. Under 1.5 is a red flag. The scanner crawls your sitemap and measures it per target URL.

Author: J.A. Watte
Published: May 6, 2026
Source: https://jwatte.com/blog/blog-tool-anchor-text-entropy-scanner/

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A natural link graph has variation. Humans don't link to your pricing page with the same two-word anchor every time. Sometimes they write "see our plans." Sometimes "check the pricing." Sometimes just "here." The entropy of the anchor-text distribution is high because humans are high-entropy.

Automated internal linking — in a CMS template, a sidebar widget, a mass-replace sed command — produces low-entropy distributions. Every link to `/pricing` literally says `pricing`. Google's helpful-content signals treat this as a keyword-stuffing pattern and discount those links.

[Anchor Text Entropy Scanner](/tools/anchor-text-entropy-scanner/) crawls your sitemap (up to 100 pages), aggregates every internal anchor per target URL, and computes the Shannon entropy of the distribution.

## The three problems entropy math catches

**Over-optimization (entropy < 1.5).** The internal link set to one target URL has minimal variation. Often one exact-match anchor on 90% of the links. Fix: rewrite sidebar and in-content anchors to use synonyms, partial matches, descriptive phrases.

**Generic-anchor flood (>30% generic anchors).** Classics: "click here," "read more," "learn more," "see more." Google's link context model weighs descriptive anchors heavily; generic anchors carry no topical signal. Fix: rewrite sentences so the anchor is contextual.

**Exact-match spam (>70% single anchor).** Worst case of over-optimization: one anchor dominates to an absurd degree. Almost always template-driven. Template fix = site-wide cleanup.

## Why Shannon entropy is the right measure

Shannon entropy quantifies the "surprise" of a distribution. Maximum entropy = uniform distribution across N variants (every anchor different). Zero entropy = one anchor, always. The scanner computes `-Σ(p_i × log2(p_i))` for each target URL's anchor set.

For a healthy internal-link anchor distribution, expect entropy in the 2.0-3.5 range. Under 1.5 is the over-optimization tier. Zero is pathological (literally every link uses the same anchor, which is a content-template bug).

## What to do after the scan

The AI fix prompt emits per-target anchor-variation suggestions: 5-8 alternate phrasings that cover synonyms, partial matches, and descriptive contexts. Hand that to a content editor and the rewrite happens in 2-3 hours per 100 target URLs.

## Related reading

- [Internal Link Auditor](/tools/internal-link-auditor/) — finds 404s + 301 chains in internal links
- [Link Graph](/tools/link-graph/) — orphan + hub visualization

## Fact-check notes and sources

- Shannon entropy: [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory))
- Google on link-crawlability and anchor text: [developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable)
- Helpful Content Update: [developers.google.com/search/updates/helpful-content-update](https://developers.google.com/search/updates/helpful-content-update)

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*The $100 Network covers internal-linking strategies at network scale, where one bad template propagates to 1000 pages. The scanner is the audit to catch it.*


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