Reading the Site Structure Visualization
Every page on your site is a node, and the node's color is its PageRank measured against your other pages. Red is the top of your scale, blue the bottom, running through cyan, green and yellow between them.
That scale is internal. It says which of your pages carry weight, not how you compare to anyone else. The rest of this page covers what you can do with the map once you can read it, and you can send the result to clients through the SEO Report Builder or why visualizing structure works at all.
Getting Started with the Visualization
The map lays itself out from two things at once: how many clicks a page sits from your homepage, and how topically close it is to its neighbours. That is why related pages end up near each other rather than in the order you crawled them.
Understanding the Display
Five things on a node carry meaning, and none of them are decoration:
- Color is PageRank relative to your own site, blue at the bottom of the scale through to red at the top
- Bigger text means the page sits higher in your site hierarchy
- A solid border is a page that exists; a dashed border is one you have planned but not built
- Solid lines are existing links, dashed lines are planned relationships
- Node text flips between black and white to stay readable on its background
Understanding Node Colors
Node colors reflect the relative authority (PageRank) of each page within your site. This internal authority calculation helps identify which pages could benefit most from optimization efforts.
It is perfectly normal, even expected, that the pages shown will span the color range. This is comparing your own pages to your own pages. This value is not from Google and does not compare your pages to any other pages on the internet.
Interactive Controls
Moving Around the Map
Drag the background to pan. Use the mouse wheel or a pinch gesture to zoom. The Refresh Visualization button resets the view when you have moved too far to find your way back.
HUD (Heads-Up Display)
The HUD sits in the top-right corner and holds four controls:
- Search box for finding specific pages by URL, title, or H1
- Metric selector for choosing what the node colors mean
- Fullscreen toggle for detailed analysis
- Accessibility toggle for color-blind friendly visualization
Timeline Controls
The timeline appears below the visualization once you have more than one snapshot. Click any point on it to load that snapshot, hover a marker to see its details, and note that the rightmost position is always current data. A pre-optimization snapshot is taken automatically before changes are applied, which is what gives you a before and after to show.
You can share these timeline views with clients, and set reminders against them with calendar and tasks.
Interacting with Pages
Click any page to see detailed information and available actions:
- View page details including URL, title, and H1
- See inbound and outbound relationships
- Access optimization tools
- Manage keywords and relationships
Working with Relationships
The visualization makes it easy to understand and modify relationships between pages. When you hover over a page, its connections are highlighted, showing both inbound and outbound relationships.
To create new relationships:
- Click the link icon on the left side of any node
- A guideline follows your cursor to the target page
- Click the target page, then confirm the new connection
Visualization Tools
Export Options
Share your visualizations or save them for reference using the export tools:
- PNG export for high-quality images
- JPG export for smaller file sizes
- JSON export for data backup
Color Schemes
The color legend stays in the top-left corner. Click it, or use the HUD control, to switch between the standard scale and a colorblind-friendly Viridis palette that runs dark to bright instead of blue to red.
Advanced Features
As you become comfortable with the basic visualization, explore advanced features like SEO Workflows, authority flow analysis, and structural optimization. These tools help identify opportunities to improve your site's structure and performance.
Ready to take your optimization further? Learn about our automated optimization strategies for targeted page improvements.
Create your free LinkMap and put this into practice on your own pages.