Broken internal links that cut the route through your own site

Crawl for links you own

Run a crawl and filter to internal links that return 404 or 410. Include links inside articles, not only the menu. A renamed guide often leaves a dozen body links behind.

Check the template too. A card component that builds a slug incorrectly can break every item in a section with one bad function.

Repair the destination, not the silence

If the page moved, point the link at the new URL and add a redirect for anyone who bookmarked the old one. If the idea was retired, link to the closest living guide or remove the sentence that promised it.

Do not send readers to the homepage as a universal fix. A homepage link from a specific claim feels like a dead end with extra steps.

• Update in-content links when slugs change.
• Redirect old slugs that already earned mentions.
• Fail the build or the crawl when new internal 404s appear.

Make link checks part of publishing

A guide that cites five other notes should be checked when any of those notes is renamed. The editorial calendar and the redirect map belong in the same review.

After the fix, the crawl should show those sources linking to 200 URLs. That is the confirmation, not the absence of a user complaint.

Are broken internal links a ranking penalty?

They are a quality and discovery problem, not a special penalty. They waste crawl and remove the path to pages you wanted found.

Should every retired URL redirect home?

Only if the homepage is genuinely the replacement, which is rare. Redirect to the page that now answers the same question, or let a true 404 stand.