How to find and fix broken internal links

Broken links damage user experience, dilute ranking authority, and signal a poorly maintained site to search engines. This guide finds and fixes broken internal and outbound links using Webanto Content Intelligence's broken-link checker.

1. 1

   Run a crawl

   Go to Content Intelligence > Link Health > Run crawl. The crawl maps every page on your site and every link (internal and external) on each page.

2. 2

   Run the broken-link checker

   After the crawl, click 'Check broken links'. The checker fires HEAD requests against every external URL with concurrency limits and flags any URL returning a 4xx or 5xx status. Internal 404s are detected directly from the crawl.

3. 3

   Sort by impact

   Open the broken-links report. Sort by 'pages affected' descending — the broken links appearing on the most pages should be fixed first.

4. 4

   Decide: fix link or redirect target

   For each broken link: if the target moved to a new URL, update the link in the source post. If the target is gone permanently, decide whether to remove the link or replace with a relevant alternative (your own content if possible).

5. 5

   Apply fixes via the CMS

   Click into each broken link. For WordPress, the editor opens to the exact post; for Shopify, the article. Edit the link in place and save. Webanto can also push the change automatically when you approve the suggested replacement.

6. 6

   Set up a 301 redirect for moved internal URLs

   If an internal URL changed (e.g. /blog/old-slug → /blog/new-slug) and you can't update every link, add a 301 redirect at the server or CDN level. WordPress users can use Redirection plugin; Shopify supports redirects natively.

7. 7

   Re-run the broken-link check

   After fixing, re-run the broken-link check. Confirm the broken count drops. Some external links may take 24-48 hours to update across DNS / cache.

8. 8

   Schedule weekly broken-link checks

   Enable the weekly cron in account settings. New broken links accumulate continuously (external sites die, products are removed, slugs change) and a weekly check catches them within days.