How to Find Broken Links on WordPress: Plugin + Cloud Scanner
Broken links are inevitable. External sites go offline, you restructure your permalinks, products get discontinued. The question isn't if your WordPress site has broken links — it's how quickly you find them.
There are two fundamentally different ways to scan for broken links, and the smartest approach is to use both.
Method 1: Internal Scanning with a WordPress Plugin
A WordPress plugin like Tidy Broken Link Scan scans your site from the inside. It reads directly from your WordPress database — every post, page, menu, and custom field — and verifies each URL with HTTP requests.
Why this matters
- Catches everything — including draft posts, password-protected pages, and links in ACF fields that an external crawler would never see.
- Real-time monitoring — with scheduled scans, you're alerted the moment a link breaks, before it affects your visitors or SEO.
- Fix in place — edit broken URLs directly from the results table without opening the post editor.
- Zero external dependencies — everything runs on your server, no third-party service required.
The free version covers manual scanning of posts, pages, and menus. The Pro version adds scheduled scans, ACF field scanning, email alerts, and domain exclusions.
Method 2: External Scanning with a Cloud Crawler
An external scanner like Tidy Broken Link Scan crawls any website from the outside — exactly the way Google does. It follows every link on your public pages, checking HTTP status codes, redirects, and timeouts. It works with any site — WordPress, Shopify, static sites, or custom-built platforms.
Why this matters
- Sees what Google sees — if a link is broken for Googlebot, it's broken for your rankings. An external scan catches rendering issues, server-side redirects, and CDN problems that an internal scan might miss.
- Zero server load — the scan runs on cloud infrastructure, not your WordPress server. Your site performance is completely unaffected.
- No installation needed — just enter any URL and scan. Works with any website — WordPress, Shopify, static sites, or custom platforms. Great for quick audits and client reports.
- Catches cross-domain issues — verifies that outgoing links to external sites actually work, including social media profiles, partner sites, and affiliate links.
Why You Should Use Both
Each method has a blind spot that the other covers:
| Internal Plugin | External Scanner | |
|---|---|---|
| Draft & private content | Yes | No |
| ACF & custom fields | Yes (Pro) | No |
| Sees what Google sees | No | Yes |
| Zero server impact | No | Yes |
| Real-time monitoring | Yes | No |
| No plugin required | No | Yes |
The recommended workflow:
- Install Tidy Broken Link Scan for continuous monitoring inside WordPress. Set up daily or weekly scheduled scans with email alerts (Pro) so you catch broken links as they happen.
- Run Tidy Broken Link Scan monthly for a full external audit. This catches anything the plugin might miss — rendering issues, CDN problems, redirect chains, and the overall health of your public link structure.
- Fix issues from both sources — use the plugin's inline editor for quick fixes, and the cloud scanner's report for a broader view of your site's link health.
Getting Started
Both tools are free to start with. Install the Tidy Broken Link Scan plugin from your WordPress dashboard, and run your first cloud scan right now — it takes less than a minute.
Together, they give you the most complete broken link detection strategy available for WordPress — internal monitoring for speed, external scanning for accuracy.