Technical eligibility · Branch T.A, Crawl, HTTP and indexable content
T-06 Critical navigation must use real crawlable links
Important navigation and internal links must work as standard <a href> links and must not depend only on JS click events.
- Scope
- All public content
- Priority
- High priority.
- Quality bucket
- Technical eligibility
- Legacy coverage
- SEO-39
Why it matters
If a menu or internal link works only through a script click, crawlers may never find the pages behind it. Visitors using assistive tools or with scripts disabled can also be stuck. Google's link guidance relies on standard anchors for this reason.
How to implement
- Run a DOM crawler over your main navigation and internal links.
- Find links that only respond to JS click events.
- Rebuild them as standard <a href> links pointing to the real URL.
- Re-crawl to confirm every important navigation URL appears in an anchor with an href.
How to audit
- Use a DOM crawler to check that important navigation URLs sit in real anchor elements with an href.
How UltimateSEO checks this automatically
Automated. Checked automatically: primary navigation and in-content links are real anchor elements with resolvable href values rather than script-only handlers.
States used: PASS, FAIL, UNKNOWN, NOT_APPLICABLE or BLOCKED. UNKNOWN is never shown as a pass. How states work.
Sources
Part of The UltimateSEO Framework v4.1, revised 2026-10-07. Evidence states, control states and the publish gate are explained on the hub.