Broken links are a common issue that can hurt your website's SEO performance and frustrate users. When visitors click on a link and land on a 404 error page, it leads to a poor experience and often causes them to leave your site. Search engines also view broken links negatively when crawling and indexing your pages. That's why it's critical to regularly audit your site for broken links and promptly fix them. In this guide, we'll walk through how to effectively find and resolve broken links on your website step-by-step.
Why Broken Links Are Bad for SEO
Broken links occur when a URL no longer exists or can't be accessed for some reason. This could be due to a page being deleted, moved, or renamed, or the link being entered incorrectly. When search engine bots crawl your site and encounter broken links, it sends negative signals that can hurt your rankings and indexing.
Broken links waste "crawl budget", which refers to the number of pages a search engine bot will crawl on your site. If bots spend time trying to crawl broken URLs, they crawl fewer actual pages. Broken links also prevent link equity (aka "link juice") from flowing through your site, which weakens your internal linking and overall SEO.
From a user perspective, broken links create a frustrating experience and make your site seem outdated, unreliable, or poorly maintained. Multiple studies have found that a single broken link can cause over 80% of users to leave a website and not return. Clearly, proactively finding and fixing broken links needs to be a priority in your SEO strategy.
How to Find Broken Links on Your Website
The first step to fixing broken links is finding them. Manually checking every link on a large website is extremely time-consuming, so it's best to use tools to automate the process. Here are some of the most effective methods and tools for identifying broken links:
1. Google Search Console
Search Console is a free tool from Google that helps you monitor your site's presence in Google search results. It has a section called "Coverage" that shows pages that return 404 errors. This is a quick way to spot broken links that Google has identified when crawling your site. However, it may not find all broken links, so it's best to combine Search Console with other tools.
2. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog is a popular SEO crawling tool that can scan your entire website and generate a report of broken links. It's free to use for sites up to 500 pages. For larger sites, you'll need a paid license. After crawling your site, go to Bulk Export > Response Codes > Client Error (4xx) to see a list of broken links.
3. Ahrefs Site Audit
Ahrefs is an SEO platform that includes a comprehensive site auditing tool. The Broken Link Checker looks for broken links both on your site and on other sites linking to you. It categorizes broken links by type (404, 5XX, etc.) and shows which pages they are on. This is very helpful for identifying both internal and external broken links.
4. SEMrush Site Audit
SEMrush is another popular SEO toolkit that can find broken links. Their Site Audit tool crawls your site and provides a detailed report of issues like broken links, identifying the page URL, link URL, and link text. It also tracks your progress over time as you fix links.
Whichever tool(s) you use, compile a list of all the broken links on your site in a spreadsheet, including the page URL, broken link URL, link text, and link type (internal or external). Having all the data organized in one place will make it easier to systematically fix the links.
How to Fix Broken Internal Links
Once you have a list of broken internal links, there are a few ways to fix them depending on the cause of the issue:
1. Restore Deleted Pages
If the broken link is pointing to a page that was deleted, consider restoring the page. This is the simplest solution, especially if the page was deleted by accident or still contains valuable content. Restoring the page will instantly resolve the broken links.
2. Redirect to a New URL
If the page has moved to a new URL, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. 301 redirects indicate a page has permanently moved and pass 90-95% of link equity to the new URL. Most websites have a Redirects option where you can easily set this up. Redirecting will seamlessly route users and search engines to the new page.
3. Update the Broken Links
If the broken link is due to the URL being entered incorrectly or no longer being relevant, simply update the link to a working, relevant URL. You'll need to locate the page(s) where the broken link appears and edit the hyperlink. If the same broken link appears on multiple pages, do a find and replace to update it across the whole site.
4. Remove the Broken Links
If a broken link points to content that no longer exists or isn't relevant to replace, you can consider just removing the link altogether. Only do this if the link isn't integral to the page content and user experience. Again, you'll need to find the pages with the broken link and remove the hyperlink.
Fixing Broken External Links
Fixing broken links to external websites is trickier since you don't have control over the other site. However, these links can still hurt your SEO and are worth addressing. Here are a few options:
1. Reach Out to the Website
If you have a relationship with the external website, reach out and let them know about the broken link. They may restore the page or provide an updated URL you can link to instead. This is most effective for links to sites you regularly partner with or contribute to.
2. Find a Replacement URL
If the external page has moved rather than being deleted entirely, try to find the new URL. Do a site search on their website for relevant keywords or identifying information from the broken URL. If you find a suitable replacement page, update the link to the new URL.
3. Link to a Different Resource
If you can't find the original external content, look for a different authoritative website with similar information you can link to instead. Prioritize well-known, trusted sites with high-quality content on the same topic. Swap out the broken link with the URL of the new resource.
4. Remove the Broken Links
As with internal links, if you can't find a suitable replacement, you may need to simply remove the broken external links. Review the context to ensure removing the link doesn't negatively impact the page's usefulness.
Preventing Future Broken Links
After going through the effort to fix broken links, you'll want to avoid them cropping up again. While some amount of broken links over time is inevitable, there are steps you can take to minimize them:
- Avoid linking to pages you anticipate being deleted or moved soon
- Use descriptive anchor text for links rather than generic text like "click here"
- Regularly audit your most important pages for broken links
- Set up 301 redirects whenever a page is deleted or its URL changes
- Automatically monitor and test all external links
- Carefully check links on new pages before publishing
By making these tactics part of your regular workflow, you can prevent a buildup of new broken links that could hurt your SEO.
The Importance of Ongoing Link Maintenance
Fixing broken links isn't a one-time task - it needs to be part of your ongoing SEO maintenance. Even after an initial comprehensive link audit and cleanup, new broken links will inevitably occur over time as your site changes.
Aim to audit your entire site for broken links at least once per quarter, or more frequently for very large or fast-changing sites. In between full audits, keep an eye out for any broken link warnings in Search Console or analytics to catch issues early.
It's also important to prioritize which broken links to fix first. While all broken links are problematic, those on your most important pages - like the homepage, top navigation, and key product or service pages - should be fixed immediately. Broken links on old, low-traffic posts are a lower priority.
If multiple people work on your website, make sure everyone follows a system for avoiding and fixing broken links. For example, create a checklist for the QA process before publishing new content. Establish a clear process for setting up redirects any time a page URL changes or a page is removed.
By staying on top of broken links proactively, you can avoid negative SEO consequences and keep your site running smoothly.
Key Takeaways for Fixing Broken Links
Broken links are a common technical SEO issue that can hurt your search rankings and traffic if not addressed. Some key strategies to find and fix broken links include:
- Using tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to automatically identify broken links
- Restoring deleted pages, setting up 301 redirects, updating URLs, or removing links to resolve broken internal links
- Reaching out to external sites, finding replacement resources, or removing broken external links
- Implementing proactive measures to minimize future broken links
- Regularly auditing your site and prioritizing key pages to keep on top of link maintenance
By following this step-by-step process and making broken link monitoring part of your ongoing SEO strategy, you can ensure your site delivers a great user experience and strong search performance.