No broken internal links

broken_internal_links

Checks for broken internal links that return errors.

What does this rule check?

Broken internal links point to pages that no longer exist (404) or have server errors (5xx). They waste crawl budget, pass no link equity, and create a poor user experience.

Why is this important?

Broken links waste crawl budget, create poor user experience, and signal a poorly maintained site to search engines. They also prevent link equity from flowing to the intended pages.

How to fix

Find and fix all broken internal links. Either restore the target pages, update the links to point to the correct URLs, or remove the links entirely.

Examples

<a href="/old-page">Read more</a>
<!-- /old-page returns 404 -->

<a href="/new-page">Read more</a>
<!-- /new-page returns 200 -->

Agent fix snippet

Copy this snippet and paste it into your AI coding agent to fix this issue automatically.

Fix broken internal links:
1. Update the href to the correct URL
2. If the page was moved, use the new URL
3. If the page was deleted, link to the closest relevant page
4. Remove links that are no longer relevant