The playbook
Broken Links: How to Prioritize the Work
Prioritize broken links work by connecting an observed problem with the people or business outcomes it affects. The objective is to repair links that lead readers to unavailable or incorrect destinations. Give the team a short ordered queue with a reason for each decision, rather than treating every suggestion as equally urgent.
Put the task in context
Separate an incorrect link in a shared menu from an obsolete external reference in one article. The menu repair belongs in the common component. The article may need a current replacement source or a rewritten recommendation rather than a redirect you do not control.
Build a queue from observed problems
Collect candidate work with source URL, the current condition, and the reason it matters. The first pass should distinguish a confirmed defect from an improvement idea. An item affecting broken links on priority pages directly may deserve a different response from a preference with no observed effect.
Apply a practical decision order
| Order | Decision rule | Topic-specific starting point |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Resolve failures that block the intended task | Restore the expected resource or update the surrounding recommendation |
| 2 | Restore missing information needed for the next decision | Collect broken internal and external destinations |
| 3 | Improve the most common supported use case | Identify the pages and components that link to them |
| 4 | Verify the result before extending the change | Replace remove or redirect links based on relevance |
Consider reach effort and confidence together
Estimate how many relevant items share the same problem, the effort needed to fix it, and how confident you are about the cause. Do not hide those judgments inside an unexplained score. A small confirmed repair may be more useful now than a large speculative project, even if the project's eventual upside is greater.
For example, redirecting a missing resource to an unrelated sales page is a specific candidate for investigation. Check whether it occurs in one page or query record or across a repeated process. Where the same cause is confirmed, a shared correction may reduce repeated work. Where causes differ, preserve separate tasks instead of forcing them into one fix.
Write an actionable task
| Task element | Required detail |
|---|---|
| Scope | The relevant source URL and broken target |
| Observed problem | Redirecting a missing resource to an unrelated sales page |
| Proposed correction | Restore the expected resource or update the surrounding recommendation |
| Verification | Replace remove or redirect links based on relevance |
| Owner | content or development owner |
Limit work in progress
Choose a small set of tasks the responsible owners can finish and verify. Starting every item at once increases the number of unresolved dependencies and makes it difficult to learn from the first changes. Complete the blocked or foundational work before taking on refinements that depend on it.
Revisit the queue when evidence changes
After the first changes, inspect broken links on priority pages and the observed condition that justified the work. Move an item up when evidence shows broader impact, or down when the assumed problem is not present. Keep the reason for reprioritization so the team can explain the decision without repeating the original investigation.
Keep a dated record of the page or query being examined. Search interfaces and external references can change. A saved observation should include enough context to distinguish an old issue from the current state.
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