Link audits
When to Run a Full Link Audit
Deep audits are not for every day. Here are the moments when a complete crawl really pays off.
DeadLinkr blog
Guides on link audits
Practical, honest advice from the team behind DeadLinkr, written to help you do this well.
Link audits
How a Site Crawl Actually Works
Understanding how a crawler sees your site helps you fix what it finds. Here is the short version.
Link audits
Reading a Redirect Chain Map
Redirect chains hide in plain sight. Here is how to read a map of them and flatten the mess.
Link audits
A Pre Launch Link Checklist
The best time to catch broken links is before launch. Here is the checklist to run first.
Link audits
404s vs Soft 404s: The Difference That Matters
Not every missing page returns a clean error. Here is why soft 404s are the sneaky ones.
Link audits
How Broken Links Waste Crawl Budget
Search engines only crawl so much. Here is how dead ends spend that budget on nothing.
Link audits
Auditing a Large Site Without Missing Pages
Big sites hide their broken links well. Here is how to audit thoroughly at scale.
Link audits
Exporting an Audit Your Developer Will Actually Use
A report is only useful if someone can act on it. Here is how to hand off an audit cleanly.
Link audits
Post Migration Audit: What to Check
A migration is not done at launch. Here is the audit that confirms it actually worked.
Link audits
How do you handle broken external links on sites you do not control?
Outbound links break on someone else's schedule, and you only find out when somebody checks. Here is a workable process for finding them, deciding what to do with each one, and keeping the fixes from piling up.
Link audits
Why does a redirect loop keep coming back after it was fixed?
A redirect loop that reappears almost always has more than one author. Here is where loops actually come from, why a fix at one layer does not hold, and how to make the correction stick.
Link audits
How often should a small business website check for broken links?
A ten page site does not need weekly crawls, but it should not wait for a customer to report a dead booking link either. A cadence based on how the site actually changes, and which links matter most.
Link audits
Which broken links should you fix first when an audit lists hundreds?
An audit with four hundred rows is not four hundred problems of equal weight. A triage method that gets the important fixes done this week and puts everything else in a backlog the team will actually work through.
Link audits
What should a content manager do when an audit finds orphan pages?
Orphan pages are live URLs with no internal links pointing at them. Some should be linked back in, some redirected, and some removed. How to sort them without guessing, and how to stop creating new ones.
Link audits
How do you find broken links hidden inside PDFs and JavaScript menus?
Standard crawlers read HTML anchors. Links inside PDFs, script-rendered menus, and click handlers can rot for years without appearing in any report. Here is how to surface them and keep them in scope.
Link audits
Why does a link audit report errors that a normal browser never shows?
The page opens fine for you, but the audit says 403, 429, or timeout. Neither is lying. How bot protection, caching, and request headers create the gap, and how to tell real failures from unverified ones.
Link audits
When should a website use a 302 redirect instead of a 301?
Most SEO advice says to always use a 301. That is right most of the time and wrong in a few specific cases. The cases where a temporary redirect is correct, where it is a mistake, and how to audit the ones you already have.
Link audits
What is the best way to audit affiliate links without breaking tracking?
Affiliate and campaign links carry parameters, pass through cloakers and network redirects, and fail in ways a plain 404 check cannot see. A method that finds the real failures while keeping attribution and click counts honest.
Link audits
Why do anchor links and in-page jumps break silently without ever reporting a 404 error?
Anchor links fail in the browser, not on the server, so a broken jump link still returns a healthy 200 and never shows up in a standard audit. Here is why they rot and how to test them properly.
Link audits
What is the best way to find staging and localhost URLs left behind on a live site?
Staging and localhost addresses survive launches in places a normal broken link report never looks. This is the sweep we run to find every one of them, and the setup that stops them coming back.