Guide
How to Check External Links
How to Check External Links in Sitepager
Sitepager can check external links on your website to see if they are working. This helps you catch broken links that may affect your site's reliability.
Broken external links can hurt user experience and credibility. Learn more about why monitoring external links matters in our blog: External Links, UX & Trust: Why Monitoring Matters.
What Sitepager Checks
Sitepager identifies external links found on the pages included in your Check.
It checks if those links return an error, such as 404 (Not Found) or 500 (Server Error).
It does not crawl or take screenshots of external pages.
How to Enable External Link Checking
By default, Sitepager does not check external links. To enable it:
Open Check Configuration.
Go to All Configs and create a new one or clone an existing configuration.
Enable External Link Checking.
Scroll to Check External Pages under Advanced Check Options.
Select the checkbox to enable external link checking.
Run the Check.
Save your config and start the Check as usual.
How to Review External Links
Once the Check is complete, Sitepager lists external links in the Check Report.
Open the Check Report.
Go to All Checks and select your completed Check.
Scroll down to the Links to External Pages section in the Check Report.
This section shows a list of external links found on the tested pages.
Check the Status of Each Link.
✅ No Issues – The external link is working.
❌ 404 Not Found – The linked page does not exist.
❌ 500 Server Error – The external site had a server issue.
⚠ Other status codes may be displayed depending on the response.
Practical Use Cases
Here are some ways you can use Check External Pages in Sitepager:
Find broken external links on key pages – Ensure pages like the homepage, pricing, or help center don’t link to missing or outdated resources.
Monitor blog posts for outdated links – Run Checks on blog pages to catch broken external references before visitors find them.
Check external links after a website update – After content additions, changes or a migration, verify that external links still point to working pages.
How to Fix Broken External Links
If a link is broken:
Check for typos in the URL and correct them.
Update or remove links to pages that no longer exist.
Best Practices
Run Checks regularly to catch broken external links before they impact users.
Prioritize high-traffic pages like the homepage, pricing, and key landing pages.
Fix issues quickly to avoid linking to outdated or missing content.
Next Steps
Learn More About Including and Excluding Pages:
Understand how to control which pages are included in your Checks in the How to Include and Exclude Pages guide.
Manage Configurations and Baselines:
Save and reuse configurations in the How to Manage Multiple Baselines Guide.