Links & site structure
4xx pages linked internally
One of the 136 checks Lala SEO runs on every page of a site in a free audit.
- How serious
- Serious. Can stop pages from appearing in Google, or from working for visitors. Fix these first.
- Based on
- Industry standard: Google does not document this one, so the check follows established practice.
What is wrong
Your website contains internal links that point to pages which return error codes (such as 404, meaning the page does not exist). These are links you have placed yourself—in your navigation, content, or footer—that lead nowhere.
Why it costs you
When a visitor clicks one of these links, they hit a dead end instead of finding what you promised them. They leave frustrated, and Google's crawler wastes time following broken paths instead of discovering your real content. Both hurt your chances of being found and trusted.
How to fix it
Find each broken internal link by checking where it appears on your site, then either delete the link entirely or update it to point to the correct page. If the target page has moved, update the destination URL. If the page no longer exists, remove the link. Do this in your page templates if the link appears across multiple pages—one edit fixes them all.
What the audit tests
- No page found in the crawl returns a 4xx error such as 404
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