What is a broken link checker?
A broken link checker follows the links on a page and tells you which ones fail. A link is broken when the page it points to answers with an error, such as 404 Not found or 500, times out, or sits on a domain that no longer exists.
Broken links waste a visitor's click and a search engine's crawl. One or two are normal on a large site. Dozens on key pages make a site look neglected and hide pages that should be found.
What does it check?
It reads your page, then a small number of pages on the same site that your page links to. Every link it finds is tested once: links inside your site and links to other sites.
Each problem is shown with the page it sits on, the anchor text and the reply it got, so you can find it in your editor in seconds.
Which broken links should you fix first?
Start with links in your menu, footer and top pages, because they appear on many pages and get the most clicks. Then fix links to pages that moved, by pointing them at the new address.
Links to other sites that died can be removed or replaced with a live source. Links that redirect still work, but pointing them at the final address saves a step.
How is this different from a full site audit?
This checker looks at one page and the pages around it, which suits a quick check after a change. Website Audit crawls the whole site, finds every broken link and orphan page, and repeats the check every week.