Why broken links hurt more than you think
I ran my first link audit on a client's site in 2019 using three different tools. They all disagreed on the number of broken links. One missed JS-rendered links entirely. Another timed out on slow pages and called them "OK." That's when I decided to build something that actually works.
Here's what most link checker guides don't tell you: a 301 redirect to a broken page is worse than a direct 404. The crawler follows the redirect, finds the dead end, and you've wasted two crawl budget URLs instead of one. This tool shows you the full redirect chain so you can catch those cases.
The three link problems that actually affect rankings
After auditing hundreds of sites, I've found that most link problems fall into three categories — and most tools only surface the first one:
- Outright 404s. Page gone. Easy to spot. Easy to fix. Usually a content deletion or URL rename without updating internal links.
- Redirect chains (3+ hops). A → B → C → D. Google's documentation says they follow up to 10 redirects, but in practice crawl budget gets burned fast. Consolidate chains to a single hop.
- Slow external links (>3s TTFB). These don't affect your SEO directly, but they signal to readers that your external resources are unreliable — and slow images tank Core Web Vitals.
How to interpret the status codes
Not all broken links are created equal. Here's how I prioritize fixes:
- 404 Not Found — highest priority. Fix or remove the link immediately.
- 410 Gone — the server is explicitly saying this resource is permanently deleted. Treat like a 404 but don't expect it to ever come back.
- 500 Internal Server Error — might be temporary. Re-run the check in 24 hours. If it persists, flag it.
- 301 Moved Permanently — usually fine, but update internal links to point directly to the destination to save a redirect hop.
- 302 Found — temporary redirect. Keep an eye on these; if they've been in place for more than 3 months, they're probably meant to be 301s.
- SSL errors — expired or misconfigured certificates. Affects both users and Google's ability to crawl. Fix immediately.
The link types this checker covers
Unlike tools that only check <a> tags, this crawler checks:
- Internal links (
<a href>pointing to your domain) - External links (outbound links to other domains)
- Images (
<img src>) — broken images hurt UX and Core Web Vitals - Stylesheets (
<link rel="stylesheet">) — missing CSS breaks page rendering - Scripts (
<script src>) — missing JS can break functionality silently
Using the API programmatically
The link checker exposes a REST API so you can integrate it into your CI/CD pipeline, Slack bots, or monitoring dashboards. Here's a quick example:
POST /api/v1/link-checker/scan with
{"url":"https://yoursite.com","depth":3}
returns a scanId and WebSocket URL. Subscribe to the WebSocket
for real-time results, or poll GET /api/v1/link-checker/scan/:scanId
for the final summary. Export via
GET /api/v1/link-checker/scan/:scanId/export?format=csv.
Continue your site audit
- → Sitemap Validator — make sure every URL in your sitemap is healthy
- → SEO Site Audit — score every page for title, meta, headings, and structured data
- → Redirect Tracer — trace the full redirect chain for any URL