SeoGuard
Errorlinks.broken-internal

Links on the site lead to missing pages

Why it matters

A link on your own site that leads to a "page not found" is a dead end you built yourself: the visitor who clicked it wanted that page enough to ask for it, and most leave rather than go looking. It isn't a ranking matter: Google says "404 errors won't impact your site's search performance", and that most aren't worth fixing because they "don't harm your site's indexing or ranking". It is an error here for the visitor's sake, and because a link into a missing page carries nothing on to a live one. A 404 that nothing links to is normal and harmless, and we say nothing about those; one that your own menu, footer or articles point at is a mistake on every page that carries the link.

Sources: Not found (404) in Search Console help; How HTTP status codes affect Google's crawlers.

How to fix it

For each missing address below, either restore the page, redirect the old address to its replacement with a 301, or edit the pages that link to it. When the link is in a menu or footer, one edit fixes every page.

Redirect 301 /old-page /new-page

Examples

These are the rule's own test pages, and what it says about each. They are run on every change to the rule book.

Errorhttps://www.example.com/old-menu answers 404, and 2 pages link to it: /, /cakes.

fail-dead-menu-link
Example site 
{
    "pages": [
        {
            "url": "/",
            "links": [
                "/cakes",
                "/old-menu"
            ]
        },
        {
            "url": "/cakes",
            "links": [
                "/old-menu"
            ]
        },
        {
            "url": "/old-menu",
            "status": 404,
            "inSitemap": false
        }
    ]
}

PassedNo link we followed on the site leads to a missing page.

pass-all-live
Example site 
{
    "pages": [
        {
            "url": "/",
            "links": [
                "/cakes"
            ]
        },
        {
            "url": "/cakes",
            "links": [
                "/"
            ]
        },
        {
            "url": "/unlinked-404",
            "status": 404,
            "inSitemap": false
        }
    ]
}