Broken internal links are a common technical SEO issue. They can send visitors to missing pages, interrupt navigation, and make website maintenance more difficult. On a large website, checking every link manually is simply not practical.
So, how can you find these links more efficiently?
Use a website crawler to discover internal URLs and check the links found on each page. This helps you review many pages in one audit instead of opening them individually.
Look for internal links pointing to URLs that return a 404 Not Foundresponse. Also review other unsuccessful responses, such as server errors, because not every broken-link issue is a 404.
Identifying the broken destination is only half the job. You also need to know which pages link to it. This makes it easier to locate and correct the original link.
Depending on the situation, update the link to the correct URL, restore the missing page, or redirect the old URL when an appropriate replacement exists. Avoid redirecting every broken URL to the homepage.
After making changes, crawl the website again to verify that the reported issues have been resolved.
KWT Spider is a desktop technical SEO crawler that can help you review internal links, HTTP status codes, and other website issues during a crawl. It can make large-scale link auditing more manageable without manually checking every page.
The goal is not just to find broken URLs, but to identify their source pages and fix the underlying problems.