How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website (Complete Guide)

Nothing kills user trust faster than clicking a link and landing on a 404 error page. Broken links are silent killers — they damage your SEO rankings, frustrate visitors, and make your website look abandoned. The worst part? Most site owners have no idea how many broken links are lurking on their site right now.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll show you exactly how to find every broken link on your website, understand why they happen, and fix them systematically so they don't hurt your rankings.

What Are Broken Links and Why Do They Matter?

A broken link (also called a dead link) is any hyperlink that no longer works. When someone clicks it, they get an error — usually a 404 "Page Not Found" message. This can happen to both internal links (pointing to other pages on your site) and external links (pointing to other websites).

The Real Cost of Broken Links

Broken links aren't just annoying. They have measurable consequences:

SEO Impact:

Google's crawlers follow links to discover and index your pages. When they hit dead ends, they waste "crawl budget" — the limited attention Google gives your site
Pages with broken internal links may get indexed less frequently or drop in rankings
External links to non-existent pages signal that your content is outdated

User Experience Impact:

88% of users are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience
Broken links increase bounce rates and reduce time on site
They undermine credibility — if basic links don't work, what else is broken?

Conversion Impact:

Broken links in your conversion funnel (signup pages, checkout, contact forms) directly cost you money
Product links that 404 mean lost sales
Broken demo or free trial links mean lost leads

Common Causes of Broken Links

Understanding why links break helps you prevent future issues:

1. Deleted or Moved Pages

You restructured your site, renamed a URL, or deleted old content — but forgot to update the links pointing to it. This is the #1 cause of internal broken links.

2. External Sites Changed

The website you linked to moved their content, shut down, or changed their URL structure. You have no control over this, but you're responsible for updating your links.

3. Typos in URLs

A simple typo when adding a link — an extra character, missing slash, or misspelled word — creates a broken link from day one.

4. Domain Expiration

External sites you linked to may have let their domain expire. The link that worked fine last year now leads nowhere.

5. Moved to HTTPS

If a site moved from HTTP to HTTPS and your link still uses HTTP, it might redirect or break entirely, depending on their server configuration.

How to Find Broken Links on Your Website

Method 1: Use a Website Audit Tool

The fastest way to find broken links is running a comprehensive site audit. Tools like SiteScore crawl every page on your site and flag all broken links in one report. This catches:

Internal broken links (pages linking to deleted content)
External broken links (outbound links to other sites that no longer work)
Broken image links (images that fail to load)
Broken anchor links (jump links to sections that don't exist)

A good audit tool also shows you where each broken link lives, so you can fix it quickly.

Method 2: Google Search Console

Google Search Console is free and shows you exactly which broken pages Googlebot has encountered:

Log into Google Search Console
Select your property
Go to Pages (under Indexing)
Look for pages marked as "Not found (404)"

This shows pages Google tried to crawl but couldn't access. The "Referring pages" section reveals which internal links point to these dead ends.

Limitation: This only catches broken links that Google has tried to crawl. New broken links may not appear for weeks.

Method 3: Check Manually with Browser Extensions

For smaller sites, browser extensions like "Check My Links" (Chrome) can scan the current page and highlight broken links in red. This is useful for:

Auditing individual high-traffic pages
Checking pages after major edits
Quick spot-checks on your homepage or key landing pages

Limitation: You must visit each page individually. Not practical for sites with hundreds of pages.

Method 4: Crawl Your Site with Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a desktop app that crawls websites like a search engine. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs:

Download and open Screaming Frog
Enter your website URL
Click "Start"
Filter the results by "Response Codes > Client Error (4xx)"

This gives you a complete list of broken links across your site. You can export it to a spreadsheet for systematic fixing.

How to Fix Broken Links

Finding broken links is step one. Now let's fix them.

Fixing Internal Broken Links

Option 1: Update the Link If the target page still exists but moved, update the link to point to the new URL. Search your content management system or codebase for the broken URL and replace it.

Option 2: Delete the Link If the linked content no longer exists and isn't coming back, remove the link entirely. Make sure the sentence still makes sense without it.

Option 3: Create a Redirect If many pages link to the old URL, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This preserves any SEO value and ensures all old links automatically work.

# Example .htaccess redirect
Redirect 301 /old-page-url /new-page-url

For Next.js sites, add redirects in next.config.js:

module.exports = {
  async redirects() {
    return [
      {
        source: '/old-page-url',
        destination: '/new-page-url',
        permanent: true,
      },
    ]
  },
}

Fixing External Broken Links

Option 1: Find the New URL The page may have moved. Search the target website or use the Wayback Machine to find where the content went. Update your link.

Option 2: Find an Alternative Source If the original source is gone forever, find similar content elsewhere and link to that instead.

Option 3: Remove the Link If you can't find an equivalent source and the link isn't essential, remove it.

Option 4: Link to an Archive For citations or references that must remain, link to the Wayback Machine's archived version:

https://web.archive.org/web/[timestamp]/[original-url]

Fixing Broken Image Links

Broken images hurt your page in multiple ways — they leave ugly gaps in your layout and waste loading time on files that never appear.

Check if the image file still exists on your server
Verify the file path is correct (case-sensitive on many servers!)
If the image is hosted externally, re-upload it to your own server
Add meaningful alt text while you're at it

Creating a Broken Link Prevention System

Fixing broken links once is good. Preventing them is better.

Set Up Monthly Audits

Schedule a regular check for broken links. Monthly works for most sites; weekly for high-traffic or frequently-updated sites. Use a tool like SiteScore to automate the scan and catch issues early.

Use Relative URLs for Internal Links

Instead of:

<a href="https://yoursite.com/about">About</a>

Use:

<a href="/about">About</a>

Relative URLs survive domain changes and HTTPS migrations without breaking.

Set Up 301 Redirects Before Deleting Pages

Before you delete or move any page:

Identify all internal links pointing to it
Update those links OR set up a 301 redirect
Then delete/move the page

This prevents 404s from ever happening.

Monitor External Links Separately

External links break without warning. Create a list of critical external links (sources, partners, product links) and check them quarterly. Some SEO tools offer ongoing external link monitoring.

Use Descriptive Anchor Text

Anchor text like "click here" makes it harder to update links because you can't search for them easily. Use descriptive anchor text so you can find and fix links by searching for the topic.

Prioritizing Your Fixes

If your audit reveals hundreds of broken links, prioritize:

High-traffic pages first — Fix broken links on your homepage, landing pages, and top blog posts before obscure pages
Conversion pages — Any page with a signup, purchase, or contact form gets priority
Internal links over external — You control internal links completely; fix these first
Recently broken over old — A link that broke yesterday is more likely to have an easy fix than one broken for years

Start Your Broken Link Audit Today

Broken links accumulate silently. The longer you wait to find them, the more damage they do to your SEO and user experience.

Run a comprehensive audit now to identify every broken link on your site. Try SiteScore free — it takes seconds to scan your entire site and gives you a clear, prioritized list of broken links to fix, along with specific instructions for each one.

Your visitors (and Google) will thank you.