Find and Fix Broken Links

Find broken internal and external links with SEO MCP, trace their source pages, and create a prioritized repair plan.

SEO MCP can filter link records by status and then trace the pages where each destination appears. The most useful output is not a flat list of broken URLs; it is a repair plan grouped by destination, source template, and site impact.

Direct prompt

Find broken links in the latest completed crawl.

1. Separate internal and external destinations.
2. Group repeated broken destinations.
3. Use source-page data to identify template-wide links.
4. Prioritize navigation and high-frequency internal links.
5. Recommend replace, redirect, remove, or recheck.

Return evidence only. Do not change project settings or start a crawl.

Tool sequence

Use list_projects and list_crawls to select valid identifiers.
Call list_links with status filters for failed destinations.
Call get_link_sources for important targets.
If needed, call get_page_details for a source page to understand context.

How to prioritize broken links

Signal	Why it matters	Likely action
Site-wide navigation source	Repeats across many pages	Fix the shared template
Internal target with many sources	Interrupts discovery and user journeys	Restore or redirect the target
External target with one source	Smaller site-wide effect	Replace or remove the citation
Temporary failure	May not be a persistent defect	Recheck before changing content
Redirect chain	Adds latency and can preserve stale destinations	Update links to the final URL

Useful follow-up prompts

For the ten broken internal destinations with the most sources,
show the source count and five representative source URLs.

Which broken links appear to come from the same navigation,
footer, or content template? Explain the URL pattern behind the grouping.

Validation

After changes, crawl the site again and compare:

Broken destination count.
Number of affected source pages.
Redirected internal links.
Crawl depth changes for restored targets.

Do not assume every non-2xx response is permanently broken. Authentication, rate limiting, bot protection, and temporary upstream failures can also affect crawl responses.