How to find and fix broken links
Check the page now, then find the rest — they are mostly in old content.
Check this page now
Free, no signup. We fetch the page live and read what a search engine would see.
A broken internal link is a visitor at a dead end and a crawler that wasted a request. It also strands whatever was behind it: a page linked only from a 404 is a page nothing can reach.
Here is how to find them and, more importantly, how to decide what each one should become.
What usually causes it
The worst ones are the oldest
Broken links accumulate in content nobody has opened in two years, which is exactly where the accumulated links and rankings are. The homepage is almost never the problem.
A redirect is not always the answer
Redirecting everything to the homepage is worse than a 404: it is a soft 404, it confuses visitors, and search engines treat it as a signal that the site is not maintained.
External links rot on someone else's schedule
You cannot prevent it, which is why this is a quarterly check rather than a one-off fix.
How to fix it
Check this page's links now
The broken link checker above follows every link on a page and reports the status each one returns, separating genuine 404s from sites that simply refuse automated requests.
Crawl the site to find the rest
Page-level checks catch what is in front of you. A crawl finds the links buried in 2022 posts, which is where most of them live.
Decide what each broken URL should be
Still exists somewhere else: 301 to the new location. Genuinely gone with links pointing at it: 301 to the closest equivalent. Gone with nothing pointing at it: let it 404 or 410 and remove the link.
Fix the link, not just the destination
A redirect keeps the visitor moving, but the link itself should be updated. Chains of redirects from old links are a slower path for every visitor and every crawl.
Catch them next time automatically
Schedule a monthly crawl. Broken links are a maintenance problem, not a project — the value is in finding them within weeks rather than years.
What the audit checks
- Every internal link that returns 404, 410 or a server error
- External links that no longer resolve
- Redirect chains that slow visitors and waste crawl budget
- Pages that are only reachable through a broken link
Check part of it right now, free
These read a live page and tell you what a search engine sees. No signup, no email.
Broken link checker
Every link on the page, followed, with the status code it returns.
SEO score checker
Score one page against the checks that actually move rankings.
The issues behind this
Each has a full entry in the issue library: what it is, what it costs a business, and step-by-step fixes for WordPress, Shopify, Webflow and custom builds.
Broken internal link
A link on the site points at a page that no longer exists.
4xx pages
Pages returning a not-found or forbidden status code.
Redirect chain
A URL bounces through two or more redirects before it loads.
5xx server errors
The server failed to return the page at all.
Questions
Related
XML sitemap errors
A sitemap is a claim about your site. This is how to make the claim true.
Noindex pages
The fastest way to lose a page is to tell Google to forget it.
Crawl the site and get every broken link with the page it is on
The free audit crawls the site, groups every finding, and returns the five things worth fixing this month in plain English. No card, no call.
Run a free audit