How to find and fix broken links on your website
A broken link is a small thing until a visitor hits one on the page that was supposed to convert them, or Googlebot hits enough of them to start trusting your site less. Finding them is quick; fixing them properly takes a bit more judgement.
Why broken links matter more than they seem
For visitors, a dead link mid-journey is a trust signal - a site that can't keep its own links working reads as neglected. For search engines, broken links waste crawl budget and interrupt the flow of authority between your pages. Neither effect is dramatic on its own, but both compound across a site with dozens or hundreds of them.
Internal versus external broken links
Internal broken links, pointing to pages on your own site that moved or were deleted, are entirely within your control and the highest priority to fix. External broken links, pointing to other sites that have since changed their URLs, are lower stakes but still worth cleaning up periodically, especially on high-traffic pages.
How to find them without checking every page by hand
Search Console's Page Indexing report flags internal pages returning 404s that Google has tried to crawl. A site crawler tool follows every link on your site the way a search engine does and lists every dead one with the page it's found on, which is far faster than clicking through manually.
The three ways to fix a broken link
Redirect it, if the destination page moved permanently - a 301 redirect passes most of the original page's authority to the new URL. Restore the content, if the page was deleted by mistake and still gets traffic or links. Remove the link entirely, if the destination is genuinely gone and nothing sensible replaces it - a dead link is better removed than left broken.
Redirect chains are the same problem in disguise
A link that redirects to a page that redirects again to a third page still works for the visitor, but each hop adds delay and dilutes the authority passed along. Chains longer than one or two hops are worth collapsing to a single direct redirect, particularly on pages that matter for rankings.
Catching them before visitors do
Links break quietly and keep breaking as other sites reorganise their own URLs, so a one-off cleanup drifts back into disrepair within months. AuditHQ's Technical suite checks for broken internal and external links as part of the free scan, flagging exactly which page and which link, so fixing them doesn't mean crawling the whole site by hand.
Frequently asked questions
Do broken links actually hurt SEO?
A handful rarely moves rankings much on their own, but they waste crawl budget, break the flow of internal authority, and signal neglect at scale. On a page you are actively trying to rank, even one broken link in the content or navigation is worth fixing immediately rather than batching for later.
Should I use a 301 or 302 redirect?
Use 301 for anything permanent - a page that moved for good, which is the vast majority of cases. Use 302 only when the change is genuinely temporary, such as a page swapped out during a sale. Search engines treat 301s as passing authority to the new URL; 302s mostly do not.
How often should I re-check for broken links?
Quarterly for most sites, and immediately after any migration, redesign or bulk content deletion, since these create the largest batches of broken links at once. High-traffic sites with frequent content changes benefit from a monthly check, since links accumulate faster than they get noticed.