Broken Internal Links Finding: Find and Fix Affected Pages

Short answer: “Broken internal links” is a critical finding in the SEO area of a Site AI Audit report. During the crawl, the audit follows the links on your site and records every page that answers with an error. The report lists those pages, so you can fix the links that point to them or redirect the old address to a working page. Visitors who land on error pages leave, and search engines waste time on dead ends.

How the audit finds broken links

The audit crawls your website the way a search engine does. Starting from the home page, it follows the links it finds, page after page, up to 10,000 pages per check. It does this politely, at about three requests per second, and it respects your robots.txt rules. Every page it visits gets a status: a normal page, a redirect or an error. The progress screen shows this as the “Crawling pages” step.

When a page answers with an error code of 400 or higher, such as 404 “not found”, the audit counts it as broken. When a page does not answer at all, because the connection timed out or was refused, it is counted separately. The result is a list that tells you where on your site a visitor can hit a dead end, something that is almost impossible to find by clicking around yourself.

What the finding says

The report shows the finding as “Broken internal links”, with critical severity. The explanation is that visitors land on error pages, and search engines waste crawl budget on dead ends. The advice is to fix or remove links pointing to these pages, or redirect them. Below the text the report lists the pages that returned an error, so you do not have to guess where to look.

Two related findings can appear next to it. “Pages that did not respond” is a warning for pages that timed out or refused the connection during the check; the usual cause is an unstable server or a very slow page. “Links that go through several redirects” is a notice for links that pass through more than one redirect on the way to the final page. It is less urgent, but it slows loading and dilutes ranking signals, as the article on finding redirect chains and loops explains.

Why broken links cost you

A broken link is a small thing, but it has a long reach. A visitor who clicks a link from your menu, a blog post or a product list and lands on an error page often leaves for good. A customer who finds a dead link on a page that explains your prices may decide that the business is not looked after. Search engines notice too. A site with many dead ends looks neglected, and the crawler spends its time on pages that do not exist instead of the pages that matter.

Broken links also hide a quieter loss: other sites that linked to your old address now lead nowhere, so the value of those links is wasted. The article on reclaiming lost backlinks by fixing broken inbound URLs shows how to recover it.

Common causes

When you look at the list, you will usually find one of a few patterns:

Deleted or renamed pages. Someone removed a page or changed its address and the links to it were not updated.
Typos in links. A missing letter or an extra slash in a manually written link.
A site migration. New address structure with no redirects from the old one.
Removed files. Links to documents or images that were deleted or moved.
Menu items for pages that are no longer there, especially in older themes.

Spotting the pattern is the quickest way to fix many items at once. If thirty broken addresses share the same old folder, one redirect rule can repair them all.

How to fix the list

Open the finding and copy the addresses. Sort them by pattern.
Decide what each one should do. If the page moved, redirect the old address to the new one with a permanent redirect. If the page was removed for good and nothing replaces it, remove the links that point to it. If there is a close replacement, redirect to that.
Update the source links. A redirect is a safety net, but the best fix is to change the link itself so that it points straight to the right address; see the guide to choosing between 301 and 302 redirects.
Make the error page helpful. A page that does not exist should show a clear message and a way back; the article on custom 404 pages shows how.
Run the check again. The list should be shorter or gone.

The step-by-step approach in how to find and fix broken links also covers external links, which are a different matter from the internal links that this audit finding reports.

Redirect or remove?

People often redirect everything to the home page, because it is easy. It is better to redirect to the most relevant page. If a product has been discontinued, send visitors to its category or to a similar product. If a service page has been merged into another, send them to that one. If there is no meaningful replacement, a page that clearly says it is gone is more honest than a redirect to the home page, and search engines treat it better. The article on 410 Gone and 404 Not Found explains when to use each.

Making it a habit

Broken links are never fixed once and forever, because sites change. Every time you delete a page, rename a category or move a section, check what linked to it. After bigger changes such as a redesign or a migration, run the audit again. A plan with re-checks is useful here: fix a batch, run a check and see the list shrink. Because a full check starts when you press the button, put it on your calendar after each major content change.

Fix the links in navigation first

If the list is long, do not start at the top and work down. Sort by where the links are. A broken link in the main menu or the footer appears on every page, and a visitor will hit it far more often than a dead link in a blog post from 2019. Repair those first, then the links on your most visited pages, and leave the old posts for last. This also reduces the number of findings quickly, which makes the work feel manageable.

Links that come from plugins and widgets

Some broken links do not live in your content at all. They come from a related-posts widget, a sidebar, a plugin that builds menus or a theme setting. If you cannot find the link in the page editor, look in widget areas, theme options and plugin settings, or ask the person who built the site. The audit lists the page where the crawler found the link, which narrows the search to a specific page.

Check what the redirect really does

After you add a redirect, open the old address in a browser and watch where it lands. It should reach the new page in one step. If it goes through the home page, a login screen or another redirect first, the visitor experience is worse than it should be and the audit may later report a chain of redirects. A quick test of a few addresses takes a minute and saves a second round of fixes.

A worked example

A garden furniture shop renamed its category “Patio sets” to “Garden sets” and changed the address. The audit report shows “Broken internal links” with 27 pages, and almost all of them begin with the old category address. The owner sets one redirect from the old category folder to the new one, which repairs every product page at once. Three remaining addresses are typos in blog posts, which she corrects by hand. A new check shows the finding is gone, and she makes a note in her launch checklist to set up redirects whenever she renames a category.

To see what your own site contains, check your website with Site AI Audit. The check needs a free account; the plans unlock the full list of affected pages.

The bottom line

Broken internal links send visitors and search engines to dead ends. The audit lists every page that returned an error, so you can group the addresses, redirect the ones that moved, remove links to pages that are gone and check again to confirm that the list is empty.

FAQ

Does the audit check links to other websites?

The finding is about broken internal links, meaning pages on your own site that returned an error during the crawl.

How many pages does the crawl cover?

Up to 10,000 pages per check, which is the same on every plan.

Should I redirect every broken address to the home page?

No. Redirect to the most relevant page. If nothing relevant exists, it is better to let the page show a clear error and remove links to it.

What is the difference between a broken page and one that did not respond?

A broken page answered with an error code such as 404. A page that did not respond timed out or refused the connection, which usually points to a server problem.

Why does the list include pages I cannot find in my menu?

The crawler follows every link on every page, including links in old posts, footers and widgets. Search for the broken address in your content to find where it is used.