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This depends upon the nature of your link amendment task. If for example, most of the links are pointing to an old architecture for your site (say your site moved from the HTTP to the HTTPS protocol) then amending the links is better, as it means the link equity won't be diluted through redirects. Even a straight A-to-B 301 redirect loses some equity, though it does a pretty good job of insulation. Usually in this situation your canonical HTTP to HTTPS redirects should be catching those links anyway If you're redirecting links which result in 404s, you can certainly use 301s but unless the content and theme of the destination URL is very similar to the removed page (which now 404s through inbound links) - then not much of the equity will shift across. Certainly it is better to actually get the links amended. My advice is, do as many amends as humanly possible (it is tedious, it will take time). For those who don't respond at all in 2-3 weeks, clean them up with 301s. If they later respond and amend their link, you could then remove that 301 to keep your htaccess file / web.config file nice and clean... Hope that helps