Link Diagnostics – Broken Links, Redirects, and Link Insights

Link Diagnostics is a comprehensive link analysis tool that scans your WordPress site for link issues and provides detailed intelligence about your internal linking structure. If you’re serious about SEO and site maintenance, this plugin gives you the visibility you need to keep your links healthy.

For a detailed feature breakdown, screenshots, and technical overview, see the official Link Diagnostic and Insights product page.

Why Link Health Matters for SEO

Over time, your site accumulates link problems. You delete old posts, change slugs, restructure content. Automated or manual redirect plugins create chains. External sites you have linked to in the past go offline. The result:

• Redirect chains that waste crawl budget and slow page speed
• Broken internal links that hurt user experience and rankings
• Orphaned content that search engines can’t discover
• Dead external links that signal poor maintenance
• Inefficient internal linking that fails to pass authority to important pages

These issues directly impact your SEO health score in tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Screaming Frog. Link Diagnostics helps you fix them systematically.

Internal Link Health – The Big Win

This is where the plugin delivers maximum value. When you change a URL or delete a post, redirect plugins create a 301 redirect. Fine for visitors, but now you have anchor texts across your site linking to URLs that redirect elsewhere. Every redirect hop wastes crawl budget and dilutes link equity, seo tools detect it and tell you to fix, but then, your site is large, how many do you want to start fixing one after the other? well, that’s why this plugin exists.

What Link Diagnostics does:

Scans every post and finds anchor texts linking to redirected URLs. You see:

• The post containing the link
• The anchor text used
• The current URL being linked to
• Where that URL redirects to
• The redirect type (301, 302, 307, 308)

Click “Fix” and the plugin updates the anchor’s href to point directly to the final destination. No more redirect chains. Your internal links point exactly where they should.

For a deeper explanation of how internal redirect chains affect crawl efficiency and SEO performance, refer to the Link Diagnostic and Insights documentation.

Why this matters:

• Preserves crawl budget by eliminating unnecessary redirects
• Passes full link equity directly to target pages
• Improves page speed (fewer redirect hops)
• Boosts SEO health scores dramatically
• Strengthens your internal linking structure

This one feature alone can move your site health score from 60% to 90%+ in SEO tools.

Other Internal Link Issues Detected

Beyond redirects, the plugin finds:

• 404 Errors: Broken internal links where the target page doesn’t exist
• 410 Gone: Links to permanently deleted content
• 500 Errors: Server errors on internal URLs
• Redirect Chains: Multiple redirect hops before reaching destination

Each issue shows the source post, anchor text, problematic URL, and HTTP status code. Fix them directly from the admin panel.

External Link Error Detection

Your outbound links matter too. Link Diagnostics scans external links and reports:

• 404 and 410 errors (broken external links)
• 5xx server errors (unreliable external sites)
• DNS failures and timeouts (unreachable domains)
• Redirect chains on external URLs

You see which posts contain broken external links and can update or remove them to maintain content quality.

Link Intelligence – Understand Your Link Structure

This is the strategic part. Beyond finding problems, Link Diagnostics analyzes your entire link structure to reveal:

Most Linked Internal Pages

See which pages receive the most internal links. These are your content hubs and authority pages. You can:

• Verify your most important pages are well-linked
• Find pages that are over-linked or under-linked
• Identify pillar content opportunities
• Balance internal link distribution

Each page shows total inbound links and expandable details listing every source post with the exact anchor texts used.

Common Anchor Texts

Discover which anchor texts you use most frequently. This helps you:

• Spot over-optimization (too many exact-match anchors)
• Find opportunities for natural language variation
• Maintain consistency across your content
• Avoid anchor text patterns that look spammy

External Domains Analysis

See which external sites you link to most often. This reveals:

• Your most frequently cited sources
• Over-reliance on specific domains
• Opportunities to diversify external links
• External relationships worth maintaining

For each domain, see which posts link to it and what anchor texts are used.

Orphaned Pages

Find content with zero internal links. These pages are invisible to crawlers and users. Link Diagnostics lists every orphaned page so you can:

• Add internal links from relevant content
• Improve site-wide content discovery
• Boost the authority of isolated pages
• Ensure all content is accessible

URL Redirect Management

Built-in redirect manager handles site restructuring and migrations:

• Create 301, 302, 307, and 308 redirects
• Add multiple source URLs to one destination in bulk
• Organize redirects with categories
• Toggle redirects active/inactive without deletion
• Bulk delete operations
• Source URL uniqueness validation prevents conflicts

Perfect for handling old URLs after site migrations or content reorganization.

How Scanning Works

Click “Start Scan” on any tab. The plugin:

1. Queries your published content (posts, pages, custom post types)
2. Extracts all links from post content
3. Checks each URL via WordPress HTTP API
4. Stores results in custom database tables
5. Shows progress in real-time

Scans are on-demand only. No background processing, no automated changes. You control when to scan and what to fix.

Credits

Developed by Àgbà Akin Managed by Ssu-Technology Limited Product documentation and feature overview maintained by Swiftspeed