How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website

A broken link points to a page that no longer works — it returns a 404, a server error, or simply times out. Every broken link is a small leak: it frustrates visitors, wastes the crawl budget search engines spend on your site, and throws away the authority that link was meant to pass.

Why broken links hurt SEO

• Worse user experience — dead ends increase bounce.
• Wasted crawl budget — bots spend time on URLs that go nowhere.
• Lost link equity — internal links to 404s pass authority into a void.
• Trust signals — lots of dead links signal a neglected site.

Types of broken links

• Internal — links to your own moved or deleted pages.
• External — links to other sites that changed or disappeared.
• Broken redirects — chains that end in a 404. See canonical pointing to a 404.
• Sitemap 404s — dead URLs listed in your sitemap. See sitemap contains 404 URLs.

How to find broken links

The fastest way is to scan a page automatically. Paste a URL into our free Broken Link Checker — it fetches the page, finds every link, and tells you which ones are broken and why.

How to fix each type

• Moved page — update the link to the new URL, or add a 301 redirect.
• Deleted page — remove the link, or point it to the closest relevant page.
• External dead link — replace with a working source, or remove it.
• Typo in the URL — correct the href.

Prevent broken links from coming back

Set up redirects whenever you move or delete a page, audit links after big content changes, and check periodically. To catch dead links across your entire site — not just one page — run a free atlookup audit.

FAQ

What status codes count as broken?

404 (not found), 5xx (server errors), timeouts, and DNS failures. 3xx redirects are fine as long as they resolve to a working page.

How often should I check?

After any major content change, and at least quarterly. External links break over time without warning.