Fix broken links with Siteimprove

Step-by-step guide to fixing broken links.

Overview

Step 2: Click “Links”

Under links, you’ll find the following options to help you find and repair broken links. Here are the 3 most important menus:

Summary: You can view a summary of all the content that contains broken links. This summary includes a dashboard that displays data about the broken links. At the bottom of the dashboard, there are two lists. The first list contains all the pages that have broken links, and the second list contains all the broken links. If you click on "View all" at the bottom of these lists, you can access the "Pages with Broken Links" and "Broken Links" pages respectively.

Pages with Broken Links: A list of content with 1 or more broken links
Broken Links: A list of links that are broken.

Step 3: Click “Pages with Broken Links” to see the list of pages that contain broken links

To preview which links are broken on a page, click the arrow in the “broken links” column. This will open a dropdown that previews the broken links on that specific page.

Step 4: Select a link to analyze

Clicking a page in the list will open a preview of it in Siteimprove with the broken links highlighted:

On the left side, you’ll see a toolbar that offers general information about broken links. “Occurrences on this page” will tell you:

How many broken links are on this page
Any links that have been identified as broken
Why Siteimprove thinks those links are broken
The option to “Open link in new window”

Step 5: Figure out why a link is broken

The "Occurrences on this page" toolbar provides you with two ways to view broken links. By default, the toolbar shows you a preview of the page as it appears to users, except with broken links highlighted in red. This view is called "Page content."

Here’s how a broken link will appear in the “Page content” view:

The "HTML" view displays source HTML. Broken links may only be visible in this view. You can learn more about finding hidden broken links in the Siteimprove resource, but you'll need to be logged in to access it.

Here’s how the same broken link will appear in the “HTML” view:

Step 6: Fix the broken link

Click the “Edit in CMS” in the toolbar at the top of the page to make changes in the CMS.

More tips

Search by a broken link

Easily find and fix broken links using Siteimprove's search by broken link feature. Just click on "Broken Links" in the sidebar menu to view the list of links that require attention.

This will take you to a list of links that are broken, including the number of pages they appear on and when Siteimprove first noticed that they didn’t work.

To see the list of pages each link appears on, click on the arrow next to the number. This will open a dropdown of URLs.

Clicking on any of these will take you to a page report for that page, where the link will be highlighted. Click the arrow again to collapse this section.

Note: Siteimprove does not check for broken links on news, events or documents.

Browser-specific broken links

Sometimes, Siteimprove may detect a broken link on your website page, even though the link appears to be working fine. This can happen due to browser compatibility issues. For instance, a license verification application may work well on Google Chrome but not on Internet Explorer. Therefore, it is recommended to test links on various browsers to ensure they are working correctly.