How to Fix Broken Links on Your Website
Broken links frustrate visitors, waste crawl budget and leak link value. Here's how to find them with free tools and fix each type correctly.
Key takeaways
- Broken internal links are fully within your control and should be fixed first.
- Update the link to the correct URL where possible; use a 301 redirect when a page has moved.
- Broken backlinks pointing to old URLs are an opportunity to recover link value with redirects.
- A few 404s are normal. Google doesn't penalise them, but users and crawl efficiency suffer.
A broken link points to a page that no longer exists, usually returning a 404 Not Found error. One or two won’t harm your rankings, but at scale broken links waste crawl budget, leak the value of links pointing to your site, and frustrate visitors.
The three types of broken links
| Type | Example | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | Your blog links to /old-service/, which you deleted |
High: fully in your control |
| Outbound | You link to another site’s page that disappeared | Medium: hurts user experience |
| Inbound (backlinks) | Another site links to your deleted page | High: you’re losing link value |
How to find broken links (free)
- Google Search Console: go to Indexing → Pages and look for Not found (404). Click a URL and use URL Inspection to see where Google found it.
- A site crawler: free crawlers (for example the free version of Screaming Frog for up to 500 URLs) list every internal and outbound link that returns an error, and which page it’s on.
- Backlink data: Search Console’s Links report shows top linked pages. Check whether any return 404.
How to fix each type
Internal broken links
- Update the link to the correct live URL. This is the best fix.
- If the page moved permanently, add a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one and update the links, so visitors don’t pass through a redirect.
- If the content no longer exists and there’s no equivalent, remove the link.
Outbound broken links
- Replace with an updated source, or remove the link.
Inbound broken links (backlinks to dead pages)
- 301 redirect the dead URL to the most relevant live page. This recovers most of the link’s value.
- If the link is valuable, ask the linking site to update it.
Don’t redirect everything to the homepage
Redirecting every broken URL to your homepage confuses users, and Google may treat these as “soft 404s.” Redirect to the closest relevant page, or let the URL return a 404 or 410 if nothing relevant exists.
Avoid creating redirect chains
When you add redirects, make sure each points directly to the final URL. Chains of several hops slow pages and dilute signals. See redirect chains explained.
Prevent future broken links
- Check links before deleting or renaming pages
- Add redirects as part of any URL change
- Run a crawl monthly, or after site updates
Broken links are one item in our technical SEO audit. For other quick fixes, see 12 quick SEO wins.