SiteAud!tLint Support

Critical Internal Linking

Broken page with backlinks

Severity
Critical
Impact
High
Effort to fix
Low
Issue code
backlinked_broken

Why it matters

Other websites link to this page but it returns an error, so the value of those backlinks is lost and visitors from those sites hit a dead end.

How to fix it

Restore the page or 301 redirect it to the most relevant live page. On a competitor site, contact the linking sites and suggest your equivalent page instead.

What this means

Another website links to this URL, according to your imported backlink data, and the URL returned an error during the crawl: a 4xx, a 5xx, or no response. The evidence shows the status and how many backlinks and linking domains point at it, for example HTTP 404, 37 backlink(s) from 12 linking domain(s).

This issue only appears after you import backlinks from Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush or another tool.

Why it matters

Backlinks are among the strongest ranking signals, and this page is wasting them. Visitors who follow those links reach an error page, and the value the links would pass to your site is lost. It is one of the fastest SEO wins available: one redirect can recover links that took years to earn.

Common causes

  • The page was deleted or its URL changed in a redesign or migration without a redirect.
  • A product or campaign ended and its page was removed.
  • Another site linked with a typo in the URL.

How to fix it

  1. Start with the URLs that have the most linking domains.
  2. Add a 301 redirect from each broken URL to the most relevant live page: the new version of the same page, or the closest replacement. Avoid redirecting everything to the home page; Google treats many irrelevant redirects like 404s.
  3. If the page should still exist, restore it at the same URL.
  4. For a valuable link with a typo, ask the other site to correct it, and add a redirect in the meantime.

Verify the fix

Recrawl, then import the same backlink file into the new audit with File > Import Backlinks CSV, because an import belongs to the audit it was added to. The issue clears once the URL redirects or loads. Redirected URLs then appear as Backlinks point to a redirect, which is the expected and much better state.

How it affects your score

Finding this issue on any page costs the Internal Linking score 8 points, plus up to 25 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. As a critical issue type it also takes 3 points off overall site health (critical deductions stop at 15 points). Blocks indexing, breaks pages or loses traffic. Fix these first.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick Broken page with backlinks. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (high) and effort (low), and in the issues CSV under the code backlinked_broken. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.

Guides that cover this issue