Medium issue
Broken internal links after site changes
Internal links break when pages move, slugs change, or navigation templates keep pointing at deleted destinations.
Why it matters
Broken internal links waste crawler paths and create dead ends for users. They are especially easy to miss when a route still exists in one environment but was removed or renamed in production.
Common signals
- Navigation, footer, or article links return 404 or 410.
- A slug rename shipped without updating old internal references.
- Links work locally but fail on the deployed production origin.
Stable fix pattern
- Update internal links at the source template instead of patching individual pages.
- Add redirects only when an old public URL still has external or bookmarked value.
- Re-check shared navigation and footer links after every route migration.
How SitePulse will monitor this in v1
- Crawls bounded internal links within plan limits.
- Groups affected source pages with the broken target URL.
- Detects new broken-link findings separately from existing unresolved links.