How to find and fix broken links
Links that answer 404 waste crawl budget and send visitors to dead ends. Fix the target or redirect it.
Step by step, with screenshots: Broken backlinks: find the links you lost and win them back →
Check your own site
Runs these 2 checks and the other 191, free, in about 45 seconds.
Or run only this check with the free Broken link checker or the free Bulk URL checker.
What it is
A broken link is a link that leads to a page that no longer works, usually one that answers 404 Not Found or 410 Gone, or a server that does not answer at all. Old campaign pages, deleted products and changed URLs after a redesign are the usual cause.
Every broken link is a dead end: the visitor who clicked it leaves or has to search again, and a search engine spends a crawl on a page that is not there. A few 404s do not hurt your site's rankings as a whole, but broken internal links waste the value you meant to pass to the target.
OK looks like this: every link on the page answers 200 directly, or after a single redirect you plan to update. getReport checks the links on the page you test and lists each broken one with its status code.
What a passing site looks like
- Every page your site links to existsfail · −10 ptseffort S
- Broken links: passeswarning · −2 ptseffort S
1. Broken internal links
Why it matters. Links to pages that no longer exist send visitors to a dead end and waste the time search engines spend crawling your site. They usually appear after a product, post or category is deleted or renamed.
- Open each page listed under "Linked from" and change the link to a page that exists, or remove it.
- If the missing page still gets visits or links from other sites, add a 301 redirect from its old address to the closest live page.
- In WordPress, a redirect plugin such as Redirection or Rank Math's redirections can add the 301 without touching the server.
2. Broken links
Why it matters. A link to a 404 page is a dead end for visitors and a wasted crawl for search engines. Old campaign or product pages are the usual cause.
- Update or remove each link listed in the technical detail; redirect the missing pages if they still get visits.
- In WordPress, a plugin such as Broken Link Checker finds these site-wide.
Questions people ask
Do broken links affect SEO?
Somewhat. Google has said 404 errors do not harm the rest of the site, but broken internal links waste crawling, pass no value to the page you meant to support, and send visitors away. Many broken links on important pages also make the site look unmaintained to people and to quality reviewers.
How do you find broken links?
Run a link checker: getReport checks the links on any page for free, and a site crawler or Google Search Console's Pages report finds 404s across the whole site. In WordPress, a broken link plugin can scan posts. Check again after migrations, redesigns and when you delete products.
Is a 404 page the same as a broken link?
No. A 404 is the answer a server gives for an address that does not exist; a broken link is a link on a page that points to such an address. 404s for URLs nobody links to are normal and harmless, for example pages you removed on purpose. The problem is links you control that lead to one, in your content, menus or templates, because visitors and crawlers follow them into a dead end.