Broken internal links are a common issue for websites, especially those with a lot of content. These links can harm user experience, SEO performance, and even credibility. Fixing them manually can be tedious, but with the right tools and a systematic approach, you can repair broken internal links in bulk, saving time and effort.

Why Fixing Broken Links Matters

Broken links lead users to dead ends or 404 pages, which can:

• Damage User Experience: Users encountering broken links may leave your site frustrated, resulting in a higher bounce rate.

• Hurt SEO: Search engines prioritize sites with proper structure and navigation. Broken links prevent crawlers from properly indexing your content.

• Lower Site Credibility: Broken links may give users the impression that your site is outdated or poorly maintained.

Now that we understand the importance of fixing broken links, let's dive into the process and explore where to begin

Step 1: Identify Broken Links.

Before fixing broken links, you need to identify them. Various tools can help you detect broken links across your website. 

Manually identifying these links is a slow and difficult process, so using SEO tools is essential and luckily, several options are available, including Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs Site Audit, and SEMrush. 

Choose the tool you're most familiar with and prefer. 

In this guide, we’ll show you how to do it using Screaming Frog.

1. Crawl The Website. Open the SEO Spider tool, enter the website URL you want to crawl into the ‘Enter URL to spider’ field and click ‘Start’ to begin the crawl. While your website is crawling you can check for 404 errors by heading to the ‘Response Codes’ tab and applying the filter for ‘Client Error 4XX’.
2. Download all the 404 Client Error Data Into A Spreadsheet

Once the crawl is complete, go to ‘Bulk Export > Response Codes > Client Error (4XX) Inlinks’ to export the data.

Step 2. Fixing Broken Links. 

There are two types of links: internal (Internal links are hyperlinks on your website that direct users from one page to another within the same domain. ) and external (are hyperlinks on your website that direct users to a page on a different domain. ) 

Fixing Broken Internal Links

There are three ways: redirects, updating the link, or removing the link.

Updating: Simply replace the incorrect URL with the correct one, and the link should function properly again. However, this approach only works if the broken link is due to a misspelled URL!

Removing: If the link isn’t needed, you can just remove it. This could be the case if you’ve updated the content on either the page with the link or the page it connects to.

Redirecting the broken internal link: Inserting a 301 redirect is a more difficult fix, but it can be a very effective solution for your SEO. 

Let’s imagine you have a broken link that points to a product you no longer sell, such as a pair of running socks. In this case, you can create a 301 redirect to a similar product (another pair of socks that are still available) or to a collection page (for example, running accessories). 

However, make sure that the page you set the 301 redirect to is relevant; otherwise 301 redirect is not an option.

Fixing Broken External Links

If you have external links that lead to dead ends, they aren't contributing anything valuable to your content.

Here are the ways to fix it:

Update the Broken Link: Check to see why it's not working; is there a typo? If so, correct the URL to the right one.

Notify the Website Owner: If you are linked to a valuable source and the page is down, it’s worth notifying the website owner. Mistakes happen, and they might appreciate knowing that the page is no longer available. If the page has been removed intentionally, consider removing the link from your own site. 

Remove the Link: If the link is brokenthere’s no typo, and you can’t find another relevant source to link to, the best option may be to simply remove it.