How to find and fix broken internal links

Quick summary

• Broken internal links harm your SEO and user experience – Google can’t index your site properly and visitors hit dead ends.
• The fastest way to find them is with an SEO tool – manual checking is too slow for any site with real content.
• Once identified, you fix them by updating the URL, adding a redirect, or simply removing the link.

Broken internal links, though often overlooked, can significantly impact a website’s SEO performance and user experience. These are hyperlinks within a website that point to non-existent or outdated pages.

When users end up at these dead ends, it leads to frustration. From an SEO perspective, it can harm your website’s rankings quite significantly.

In this post, we look at how to identify, fix, and prevent broken internal links. This keeps your website healthy for both users and search engines.

Finding broken internal links without a broken link checker is almost impossible, as you have probably added thousands of internal links across your website.

Stay with me for a couple of minutes and I will show you exactly how easily you can find and fix broken internal links.

What is a broken link?

A broken link is a hyperlink that no longer functions or leads to its intended destination. This can occur for various reasons.

A broken link, also known as a dead link, occurs when the URL a hyperlink points to is no longer accessible or valid.

This can result in error messages such as “404 Not Found” or “Page Not Available.” These show that the content associated with the link cannot be retrieved.

Understanding the impact of broken links

Addressing broken links is crucial for maintaining a seamless browsing experience for website visitors and search engine crawlers.

Broken links can frustrate users and drive them away from the site.

From an SEO perspective, broken links can negatively impact a website’s search engine rankings and credibility.

SEO Implications

Broken internal links can negatively affect your website’s SEO in several ways.

Search engines like Google consider broken links a sign of poor quality and may lower your website’s ranking accordingly.

These broken links also prevent search engine bots from properly crawling and indexing your site. This leads to decreased visibility in search results.

Google Search Central notes that broken links hinder crawling and indexing.

User Experience Issues

From a user experience perspective, encountering broken internal links can be frustrating and confusing. This disrupts the flow of navigation and can make users question the reliability of your website.

This increases bounce rates and decreases the time users spend on your site. Both are detrimental to your website’s overall SEO performance.

How to identify broken internal links

Finding and fixing broken internal links is crucial to your SEO and user experience. But how do you know if a broken link occurs on your page?

It can be checked in several different ways using manual methods or by using SEO tools to speed up the process.

Manually checking broken internal links

Manually searching for broken internal links is a boring and time-consuming task.

To identify them manually, you need to systematically go through your website’s content and click on each link to see if it leads to a live page.

While this method is thorough, it can be time-consuming, especially for larger websites. This is time you could use to actually develop your SEO rather than just fixing stuff.

Using SEO tools to find broken internal links

You can use SEO tools to automate the process of finding dead internal links.

Tools like Morningscore, Screaming Frog, and others can crawl your website and provide reports on broken links. This makes it easier to identify and address them.

This is the fastest way to identify broken internal links. It also ensures that all broken links are detected.

How to find broken links using Morningscore

The process of identifying broken internal or even external links is very simple.

Morningscore, founded in Denmark in 2018, has a 5-star Trustpilot rating from users who value its straightforward tools.

First off, you need a Morningscore account (14 days free – no credit card required. No strings attached).

1. Set up your Morningscore account from the form above. Add your website and see Morningscore scan your website right away.
2. In the top menu, click on “Health”
   
3. Scroll down to the issues table and select the category “Basic”. Check if any problems regarding “broken internal links” occur
   
4. Click on the button “View all issues”
5. Now the tab opens and you can see all pages with issues. Click “Show issues” on the page you would like to see the broken internal links for
   
6. A new tab opens which shows you the link that is not functioning on the page
   
7. Scroll down and follow the guide telling you exactly how to fix the broken internal link
   

That’s it. That is how easy it is to find and fix issues with broken internal links on your website.

How to fix broken internal links once they are identified

Finding them does not make the issue go away. Now the work of fixing them begins.

Let’s look at the possible solutions when you have broken internal links.

Update the link

The first option is simply to update the link that isn’t working.

Check why the link does not work.

Is it a typing error where the URL is wrongly typed? If so, change it to the correct URL.

Is it broken because you have deleted the target page? If so, consider if you have any other content that you could link to.

Updating the link should always be your number 1 priority.

Redirect the target page

Adding a redirect to the target URL that no longer exists forwards users clicking the link to another functioning page instead of a 404 page.

This can save time if you have the same broken internal link on many pages.

Remove the link

The best option might just be to remove the link from the page. If the link is broken and it is not because of a typo in the URL and you do not have another relevant page to forward the user to, you should simply remove the link.

Reasons an internal link gets broken

I often hear that website owners do not really understand how they can have broken internal links when they have not changed anything on their website.

I understand.

How can it just happen all by itself, right?

Below are the most common reasons that links are reported broken:

• Updated URL: If you changed a page’s URL to fix a typo without setting up a redirect, any links to the old URL will break.
• Lost Pages: Sometimes during a website migration, pages can get lost or renamed.
• Firewall or Geolocation Restrictions: Links might only work from certain parts of the world due to regional restrictions, like how some videos are unavailable in certain countries on YouTube.
• Moved Content: If a file has been removed from the server or relocated, your link to it will be broken.
• Malfunctioning Plugins: Links can fail if there are issues with plugins on your site or errors in the HTML or JavaScript code.
• The Site is Down: If either your site or the site you’re linking to is down, the links won’t work. If it’s your site, you need to fix it quickly to avoid losing traffic and rankings.
• Change in URL Structure: If you’ve changed your site’s URL structure but didn’t set up redirects, links to those pages will be broken.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I find broken internal links?

You can identify issues using Google Search Console for free crawl error reports. For a complete overview, most website owners use dedicated SEO tools to automate the process and generate a full list of broken links.

Should I redirect or update a broken link?

You should update the URL if the link simply contains a typo. If the target page no longer exists, you should set up a redirect to send users to a relevant, active page instead.

How do I fix broken links in WordPress?

WordPress users can install plugins like Broken Link Checker to scan the entire site. These tools allow you to see exactly where the errors are and fix broken links directly from the dashboard without coding.

What should a custom 404 page include?

A good 404 page should help lost users find their way back. It must include clear text, a search bar, and navigation links to keep users on your site and reduce bounce rates (UX Planet).

Do broken links affect crawl budget?

Yes, broken links waste your crawl budget by sending search engine bots to dead ends. This prevents them from finding and indexing your valuable content, which hurts your visibility in search results.