A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a page or resource that no longer exists, so the server returns a 404 or 410 response instead of content. Broken links waste crawl budget, strand any link equity pointing at the dead URL, and send visitors to a dead end.
What is a Broken Link?
A broken link is a hyperlink on a webpage that leads to a destination that no longer exists or can't be reached, typically resulting in a 404 error.
Broken links happen constantly across the web. Pages get deleted, domains expire, URLs change during site redesigns. A study by Ahrefs found that 66.5% of links to sites in the last 9 years are dead. That's not a small problem. It's the default state of the web without active maintenance.
Both internal links (within your own site) and external links (to other sites) can break. Internal broken links are entirely within your control. External ones require monitoring.
Why Does Broken Link Matter?
Broken links create problems for both users and search engines.
- Leaked link equity. When an external site links to your page and that page returns a 404, you receive zero ranking value from that backlink
- Wasted crawl budget. Googlebot follows broken internal links, spending its limited crawl allocation on dead ends instead of your actual content
- User frustration. Visitors who click a broken link lose trust in your site, and each dead end increases the chance they'll leave
- Reduced topical depth. Broken internal links sever the connections between related content that help Google understand your topic clusters
Sites with strong backlink profiles should monitor for broken links weekly.
How Broken Link Works
Why Links Break
The most common cause is content deletion without redirects. Site migrations and URL restructuring are close behind. External links break when the destination site changes or goes offline. Something you can't control but should monitor.
Finding Broken Links
Google Search Console flags broken links through its Coverage report and Links report. Dedicated crawlers like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs Site Audit, and Semrush scan every page on your site and identify both internal and external broken links. For smaller sites, free tools like Dead Link Checker work fine.
Fixing Broken Links
For internal broken links, either update the link to point to the correct URL or set up a 301 redirect from the old URL. For external links pointing to your site that now 404, create a redirect to your most relevant live page. For outbound links to other sites that have broken, replace them with working alternatives or remove them.
Broken Link Examples
Example 1: A blog with outdated resource links A marketing blog published 200 posts over 5 years, each linking to 5-10 external resources. After an audit, 30% of those outbound links are dead. Visitors clicking through find 404 pages on other sites, which reflects poorly on the blog's credibility.
Example 2: A site migration gone wrong A restaurant chain moves from Squarespace to WordPress and changes every URL pattern. Two hundred inbound links from food bloggers and local directories now point to 404 pages. Without redirect mapping, the site loses its entire backlink profile's value in one migration.
Broken link vs soft 404 vs redirect chain
A broken link returns a real error status; the two problems it gets confused with do not. Telling them apart decides how you fix them.
| Problem | What the server returns | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Broken link | 404 or 410 | Repoint the link, or 301 redirect the old URL to the closest live page |
| Soft 404 | 200 OK, but the page has no real content | Return a true 404, or restore content worth indexing |
| Redirect chain | 301 → 301 → 200 | Collapse the hops so the first URL points straight at the final one |
Soft 404s are the sneakier of the three because nothing looks wrong in a browser. Google reports them separately in Search Console's Pages report, and they keep dead URLs sitting in the index.
How to run a broken link audit
Run a full crawl, sort the errors by inbound value, and fix the top of the list first. A repeatable pass looks like this:
- Crawl the whole site. Screaming Frog's free tier handles 500 URLs; Ahrefs Site Audit and Semrush cover larger sites. Export the 4xx report.
- Pull the external picture. Search Console's Pages report shows which dead URLs Google has actually seen, and a backlink tool shows which of them still receive links from other sites.
- Rank by damage. A dead URL with 40 referring domains is worth more than 200 dead links in an old archive nobody visits. Sort by referring domains, then by organic clicks in the last 12 months.
- Choose one fix per URL. Redirect if a close equivalent exists, restore the page if the topic still has demand, or let it 410 if the content is genuinely gone and nothing links to it.
- Recrawl and confirm. Fixes that were never deployed are the most common reason the same 4xx list appears again next quarter.
Worked example: a 900-page site returns 130 broken internal links. Twelve of them sit on pages that earn 80% of the site's organic clicks, and three dead URLs still hold backlinks from local news sites. Fixing those 15 takes about an hour. The remaining 115 are archive-tag links that can be cleaned in a single find-and-replace.
What this means for a small business site
On a small site, broken links are usually self-inflicted and cheap to fix. The four causes that account for most of them: a service page renamed without a redirect, a menu or PDF deleted during a redesign, a staff bio removed when someone left, and outbound links to suppliers who changed their own URLs.
A 30 to 100-page business site can be crawled free in minutes, so quarterly is enough unless you publish weekly. Do it immediately after any redesign or platform migration, because that is when a single URL pattern change can break every link at once. If you list your business in directories, keep those destination URLs alive too: a dead link from a citation wastes the NAP consistency work that earned it.
Other people's broken pages are also an opening. Broken link building is the practice of finding dead resources that still attract links, publishing a replacement, and asking the linking sites to point at yours instead.
Common mistakes
- Redirecting everything to the homepage. Google treats an irrelevant redirect as a soft 404, so the link equity evaporates anyway. Redirect to the closest matching page or not at all.
- Ignoring 404s that get no traffic. Traffic is the wrong filter. Check referring domains first: a page with zero visits can still be holding the site's best backlink.
- Fixing the symptom, not the source. If a broken URL appears in a template, footer, or navigation block, one edit removes hundreds of errors.
- Leaving the 404 page useless. A custom 404 with search, top pages, and contact details recovers visitors that a default error page loses.
- Skipping the recrawl. Redirects deployed on staging and never shipped are a routine finding on repeat audits.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many broken links are too many?
There's no specific threshold, but any broken link on a high-traffic or high-authority page should be fixed immediately. A site with hundreds of broken links signals neglect to both users and search engines. Prioritize pages with the most backlinks or organic traffic.
Do broken outbound links affect my SEO?
Broken outbound links don't directly hurt rankings, but they create a poor user experience that can increase bounce rates. Google's quality guidelines emphasize linking to working, helpful resources. Fix them as part of regular content maintenance.
How often should I check for broken links?
Monthly is the minimum for most sites. High-volume sites with thousands of pages should run weekly crawls. Set up automated monitoring through Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Search Console alerts to catch new broken links as they appear.
Are broken links a ranking factor?
Not directly. Google has said there is no penalty for having 404s, and dead pages simply drop out of the index. The damage is indirect: lost link equity from backlinks pointing at dead URLs, crawl budget spent on errors, weaker internal linking between related pages, and visitors who leave.
Should I redirect a dead page or let it 404?
Redirect when a genuinely equivalent page exists or the old URL still has backlinks. Let it return 404 or 410 when the content is gone, has no close match, and nothing links to it. A 410 tells Google the removal is deliberate and gets the URL dropped faster.
How do I find broken links for free?
Google Search Console lists the 404s Google has crawled, and Screaming Frog's free tier crawls up to 500 URLs per site. Between the two, most small business sites can be checked end to end without paying for a tool.
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Sources
- Ahrefs: Study on Link Rot
- Google Search Central: Fix Crawl Errors
- Moz: Broken Links and SEO
- Screaming Frog: How to Find Broken Links
