Broken internal links are links on your own site pointing at URLs that no longer work. They are entirely within your control, which distinguishes them from broken external links, and they accumulate on every site that changes.
What they cost
- Visitors hit dead ends, which is the most immediate cost and the one that affects conversion.
- Crawl capacity is spent requesting URLs that return nothing.
- Link signals go nowhere. A link to a 404 passes nothing to anywhere.
- Pages can be orphaned if the broken link was their only internal route.
- They indicate drift, and sites with many usually have other unresolved structural problems.
Where they come from
- Content deleted without checking what linked to it.
- Slugs edited after publication, which changes the URL silently.
- Migrations where internal links were left pointing at old URLs.
- Products discontinued and removed while category and related-product links persist.
- Typos in manually entered links, particularly in older content.
- Hardcoded absolute URLs containing a staging or old domain.
That last one is worth checking specifically after any migration. Absolute links to the previous domain survive content migration and are easy to miss. See staging site indexing.
Finding them
- Crawl the site and report internal links returning 4xx or 5xx.
- Check Search Console’s page indexing report for not-found URLs, and look at the referring pages.
- Search content for your staging or old domain name.
- Check links that redirect as well as links that break, since those should also be repointed.
Fixing them properly
- Update the link where a correct destination exists. This is the right fix and the one most often skipped in favour of the next option.
- Redirect the target where many links point at it and updating each is impractical.
- Remove the link where the destination is genuinely gone with no equivalent.
- Do not redirect everything to the homepage, which is treated as a soft 404.
Redirecting is the common shortcut and it leaves the broken link in place, so every visitor and crawler takes an unnecessary hop. Where the link can be edited, edit it.
Preventing recurrence
- Redirect rather than delete when retiring content.
- Avoid editing slugs after publication; if you must, redirect the old one.
- Use relative internal links or a helper function rather than hardcoded absolute URLs.
- Re-crawl after any structural change, which is when most breakage is introduced.
- Check the sitemap for URLs that no longer exist.
Frequently asked questions
How damaging are broken internal links?
Individually minor, collectively a real signal of neglect and a genuine cost to visitors. A handful is normal on an active site; hundreds indicates the site is drifting.
Should I fix links or add redirects?
Fix the links where you can edit them. Redirects are for URLs you cannot control, such as external links pointing at your old pages.
What about broken outbound links?
Worth fixing for the reader, though less consequential than internal ones. External sites change without notice and you cannot prevent it.
How often should I check?
After every structural change, and periodically otherwise. Quarterly suits most sites; monthly for sites with heavy content churn.
Consulting CTA
If your site has accumulated broken links after a migration or restructure, book an SEO consultation for a crawl and link integrity review.