How to Fix Broken Internal Links (404s)

Find and repair internal links that point to missing pages so you stop leaking link equity.

Medium Medium Impact 20 min

Why It Matters

Internal links to 404 pages frustrate users, waste crawl budget, and stop link equity from flowing to the pages that should rank. They usually appear after a page is renamed or deleted without updating the links to it.

How to Fix

Crawl for 404s

Run a crawl to list every internal link returning a 404.

Fix the destination

Either restore the page, 301-redirect the old URL to the best replacement, or remove/repoint the link.

Update the source links

Point the links at the correct live URL directly — don't rely on redirects long-term.

Code Fix

html

Before (broken)

<a href="/old-product-page">View product</a>  <!-- 404 -->

After (fixed)

<a href="/products/new-slug">View product</a>  <!-- live URL (or 301 the old one) -->

Platform-Specific Instructions

WordPress

A redirection plugin (Redirection, Rank Math) logs 404s and lets you add 301s; then fix the source links in content.

Next.js

Add 301s in redirects() in next.config.js and fix the <Link> hrefs.

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