Medium impactLinks
Broken Internal Links
Internal links to 404 pages waste crawl budget and frustrate users. Here's how to find and fix them in bulk.
What it means
Pages on your site link to other URLs on your site that return 404 errors.
Why it matters
Wastes crawl budget, frustrates users, and signals a poorly maintained site. Heavy enough breakage can hurt rankings.
How to fix it
- Run an audit and export the list of broken internal links with their source pages.
- Update or remove each broken link.
- If a destination URL changed, add a 301 redirect from the old to the new.
- Re-audit to confirm zero broken links remain.
Find this issue on your site automatically
FreeSEO scans for broken internal links and 140+ other issues, free, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
How many broken links are too many?
Zero is the goal. Even a handful on a small site is worth fixing.