How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website

A broken link is any link on your site that leads to a page that no longer exists — the dreaded "404 Not Found" error. They happen naturally: pages get renamed, products get retired, external sites disappear. Left unchecked, they pile up fast.

Broken links matter for two reasons. First, they waste Google's crawl budget and signal a poorly maintained site, which can quietly drag down rankings. Second — and more importantly — they make visitors hit dead ends, lose trust, and bounce. A 404 on your pricing page is a lost customer, every time.

How to find every broken link on your site

You have three free options, in order of speed:

1. Use a free broken-link checker (fastest)

Run your domain through a free tool like GoogleSiteScore, Broken Link Checker, or Dr. Link Check. Paste your URL, wait 60 seconds, and you'll get a list of every dead link the crawler found.

2. Use Google Search Console (most thorough)

Open Search Console → Pages → Not indexed → "Not found (404)". This shows every URL Google has tried to crawl and hit a 404 on, including links from external sites pointing at pages you've deleted. Indispensable.

3. Crawl with Screaming Frog (for big sites)

The free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls up to 500 URLs and flags every 404 in the Response Codes tab. Worth installing if you maintain a site over 100 pages.

How to fix each broken link

You have four moves, in order of preference:

Restore the page

If the page was deleted by accident, put it back. Easiest fix.

301 redirect to the closest live page

If the page is gone for good but a similar one exists, set up a permanent 301 redirect. For a deleted product page, redirect to the parent category. For an old blog post, redirect to the updated version. This preserves any SEO value the original page had earned.

Update the link

If the broken link is on a page you control, just edit it. Point it at a live URL or remove it entirely.

Leave it as a clean 404

If there's no logical replacement, leave the 404 — but make sure your 404 page is helpful (search bar, top links, friendly message). A good 404 page recovers visitors that a 301 to the homepage doesn't.

> Never redirect every broken URL to your homepage. Google treats homepage-only redirects as "soft 404s" and ignores them.

Watch out for these common sources

• External links to other sites — sites die. Audit your blog every 6 months.
• Old product URLs — when you remove a product, redirect the old URL.
• Image links — broken images count too. Check your media library.
• Internal links in old blog posts — easy to miss when you rename a page.

How often to check

For a typical small business site:

• Monthly: quick scan with a free checker
• Quarterly: Search Console review for crawl errors
• Anytime you rename or delete a page: check what was linking to it and update

Fix broken links and you'll claw back lost SEO juice, recover frustrated visitors, and bump your Google Readiness Score within a single re-crawl. Few SEO fixes are this easy.