A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a page that no longer loads, usually returning a 404 error. You fix it in three steps: find the dead link, work out why it broke, then update the URL, redirect it to a live page, or remove it. Finding them is the real work. The fix itself takes seconds.
The catch is that internal and external broken links cause different problems, so they need different handling. Here’s how to deal with both.
Key Takeaways
- A broken link returns an error (usually a 404) when a page is deleted, moved, or its URL is mistyped.
- Internal broken links hurt SEO more than external ones because they waste crawl budget and stop link equity from flowing.
- Free tools like Google Search Console plus a site crawler find most broken links in minutes.
- Fix each one by correcting the URL, adding a 301 redirect, or unlinking, in that order of preference.
- A quarterly link check (monthly for busy or large sites) keeps small issues from piling up.
What Are Broken Links?
A broken link is any hyperlink on your site that leads to a page that can’t be found. Click it, and you get an error instead of content, most often the “404 Not Found” message. Some people call these dead links or link rot.
Worth clearing up one thing: a broken link and a 404 are not the same. The broken link is the clickable text that points to a bad URL. The 404 is the server’s response when someone follows it. Most broken links return 404s, but some throw server errors or just time out.
Links break for a handful of predictable reasons:
- A page is deleted, and the links pointing to it are never updated.
- A URL changes (a permalink edit, a site migration) with no redirect in place.
- Someone mistypes the address in the HTML.
- An external site you linked to has removed or relocated its content.
There are two flavors to know. Internal links point to other pages on your own site, so you control them completely. External links point to other websites, which you have no control over. That difference decides how you fix each one.
Why Broken Links Hurt Your SEO
Not every broken link damages your rankings, and the honest answer is more nuanced than “they tank your SEO.”
Internal broken links are the ones to worry about. When your own pages link to dead URLs, search robots hit dead ends and burn crawl budget that should go toward your real content. Internal links also pass authority between pages, and a broken one stops that flow cold. Your stronger pages can’t lend ranking power to the pages that need it.
Internal broken links quietly leak the authority you’ve built. External ones mostly cost you trust.
External broken links are a softer problem. They rarely directly hurt rankings, but they signal neglect. A visitor who clicks two dead links in a row stops trusting your content, and Google’s quality raters read a pile of dead links as a site nobody maintains. For a resource page or a blog citing sources, that chips away at the authority you’re trying to build.
The user-experience hit lands either way. People bounce off error pages, and a high bounce rate tells search engines the page didn’t deliver. Solid internal linking habits head off most of this before it starts.
How to Find Broken Links
Don’t click through your site one link at a time. For anything bigger than a five-page site, that’s a wasted afternoon. Use tools instead.
Google Search Console is the free starting point. Open the Pages report under Indexing and look for 404s. The genuinely useful part: click any broken URL and GSC shows you the exact “Referring pages” where the dead link lives, so you know precisely where to make the fix. The limit is that it only covers your own URLs, not outbound links to other sites.
A website bot catches what GSC misses. Screaming Frog and Sitebulb crawl your site the way Googlebot does, following every link and flagging each status code. They report internal and external broken links both, and point you to the source page for each one. Screaming Frog is free for up to 500 URLs.
A WordPress plugin is the easy route if you’re on WordPress. The Broken Link Checker plugin scans in the background and emails you when something breaks. Set it to run weekly, and you’ll catch issues early.
Free online scanners like brokenlinkcheck.com handle quick one-off checks with no setup. Fine for a small blog, less so for a large site.
Most owners combine two: a crawler for the deep audit, plus GSC for ongoing monitoring. If you want a more comprehensive toolkit, our rundown of the SEO tools worth paying for covers options that make sense for larger sites.
How to Fix Broken Links
Once you have your list, fixing each link comes down to four options. Work through them in order of SEO value, best to last resort.
- Correct the typo. A surprising share of broken links are just a misspelled or malformed URL. Fix the address, and you’re done.
- Restore the page. If the dead URL had backlinks or traffic, republishing the content is the strongest fix, because it makes every existing link work again. The right call when the page mattered.
- Redirect it. If the page is gone for good but a close equivalent exists, send the old URL there. Use a 301 redirect instead of a 302 so the link equity carries over. Save the homepage for an absolute last resort, since an irrelevant redirect is barely better than a 404.
- Unlink it. If nothing fits and the page is truly gone, strip out the link. The cleanest option when there’s no good replacement.
Don’t try to fix everything at once. Start with true 404s on your highest-traffic pages and any dead URLs that have backlinks pointing at them, since those carry the most value. Anything tagged “timeout” or “bad host” often clears up on its own.
Internal and external links get fixed differently. For internal links, you update the URL or add a redirect, both fully in your hands. For external links, first check whether the destination simply moved; if so, swap in the new address. If the content is gone entirely, find a replacement source or pull the link. A dead outbound link to a respected source is worth replacing rather than leaving.
There’s also value sitting in your broken backlinks, the links from other sites that point to dead pages on yours. Find them in Ahrefs or Semrush by filtering your backlink profile for 404s, then 301-redirect those URLs to live content and reclaim the lost authority. Start with the pages that have the most referring domains.
At OnToplist, we run a custom broken-backlink checker that scans profile listings every couple of days. It’s a hands-off way to catch problems across a large directory before they ever reach the rankings.
How to Prevent Broken Links
Fixing links is reactive. A few habits stop most of them from forming at all.
- Redirect before you delete. Any time you remove or move a page, set up a 301 to the closest live page. This is the single biggest source of avoidable breakage.
- Test links before publishing. A ten-second check catches typos and bad addresses before a reader ever sees them.
- Audit on a schedule. Run a full crawl quarterly for most sites, monthly for large or fast-changing ones. After any migration or URL restructure, check right away.
- Watch your outbound sources. Sites you link to often will eventually move or vanish. A periodic crawl flags them so you can swap them out.
Tightening your site structure helps too. A clean, logical navigation menu makes broken internal links rarer and easier to spot. If link maintenance keeps slipping through the cracks, handing it to one of the SEO agencies that run technical audits takes it off your plate entirely.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between a 404 and a broken link?
The broken link is the hyperlink itself, pointing to a URL that doesn’t work. The 404 is the error code the server returns when someone follows it. Most broken links produce a 404, but some return server errors or simply time out.
Do broken links really hurt SEO?
Internal ones can, by wasting crawl budget and blocking link equity between your pages. External broken links rarely directly affect rankings, but they erode user trust and signal a neglected site, which works against you over time.
How often should I check for broken links?
Quarterly is a sensible minimum for most sites. Large or frequently updated sites do better with monthly checks, and you should always run a scan right after a migration, redesign, or URL change.
Conclusion
Broken links are one of the easiest SEO problems to fix once you can actually see them. Run a free scan with Google Search Console and a crawler, fix your highest-value pages first with redirects or restored content, then set a recurring audit so they don’t creep back. Clean links keep your visitors moving and your rankings steady.