Technical fix guide
Broken External Links Detected
Outbound links on the page lead to external sites that are down or no longer exist. Broken external links reduce trust and hurt user experience.
Issue ID: TECH-BROKEN-EXT-001
Severity: medium
Impact: Med
Effort: S
Use this article when
- You need deeper remediation guidance than the issue card can show.
- You want CMS-specific steps before handing the fix to a developer.
- You want a repeatable re-check path after shipping the change.
What this issue is
Outbound links on the page lead to external sites that are down or no longer exist. Broken external links reduce trust and hurt user experience.
Why it matters
Outbound links on the page lead to external sites that are down or no longer exist. Broken external links reduce trust and hurt user experience. This affects crawlability, rendering, and whether the site can be interpreted correctly by search engines.
How we detect it
- FreeSiteAudit flags this issue when the rule for TECH-BROKEN-EXT-001 fails and the page evidence points to Http headers.
- You can usually confirm this by checking the page source or the relevant page settings inside your CMS.
Evidence examples
Check the affected page source, rendered output, or relevant CMS setting to confirm the missing or incorrect element.
How to fix it
- 1Remove or replace links to dead external sites
- 2Update URLs to the current correct address if the page has moved
- 3Consider linking to alternative authoritative sources
- 4Periodically audit outbound links to keep them current
How to re-check it
- Click all external links and confirm they load correctly
Related tools
This issue is best verified with the full FreeSiteAudit crawl rather than a single-point mini tool.