SiteAud!tLint Support

Critical Internal Linking

Links to broken internal pages

Severity
Critical
Impact
High
Effort to fix
Low
Issue code
links_to_broken

Why it matters

This page links to internal URLs that return errors, wasting link equity and frustrating users.

How to fix it

Update or remove the broken links listed in the detail column.

What this means

This page links to one or more internal URLs that returned an error during the crawl: a 4xx such as 404 or 410, a 5xx, or no response at all. The evidence lists the broken targets with their status, for example /old-pricing [404].

The issue is reported on the page that contains the link, because that is where the fix goes. Targets blocked by robots.txt and URLs that were rate limited (HTTP 429) are not counted, since their real status is unknown.

Why it matters

  • Visitors hit a dead end and often leave.
  • Crawlers waste requests on pages that do not exist, and link value flowing through these links is lost.
  • It signals neglect. A few broken links are normal; many suggest the site is not maintained.

Common causes

  • A page was deleted or renamed without a redirect.
  • A typo in a hand-written link, or a relative link that resolves to the wrong folder.
  • A link in a template (menu, footer, sidebar) pointing at a page that moved, which repeats the broken link on every page.
  • A server error on the target that only happens under load. Check 5xx errors before removing the link.

How to fix it

  1. Sort by target, not by source. One broken URL linked from 300 pages is usually one template fix.
  2. For each target, decide:
  3. The page moved: update the link to the new URL, and add a 301 redirect from the old one for outside links.
  4. The page is gone for good: remove the link, or point it at the closest useful page.
  5. The link has a typo: correct it.
  6. Fix the target's own error first if it should exist. See Client error (4xx).

Verify the fix

Recrawl and use Compare to confirm the source pages moved to fixed. Pages linked from your imported backlinks that are broken are a separate, more urgent issue: Broken page with backlinks.

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 Links to broken internal pages. 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 links_to_broken. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.

Guides that cover this issue