A broken link is a link whose destination doesn’t load: the server answers with an error such as 404 Not Found, 410 Gone or a 5xx server error, or doesn’t answer at all. Visitors hit a dead end, and crawlers follow the link and find nothing.

Internal and external broken links

  • Internal links point at pages on your own site. They break when a page is deleted, its URL changes without a redirect, or a typo slips into a menu or template. They matter most: they are how visitors and search engines move through your site, and you control both ends.
  • External links point at other sites. They break without anything changing on your side: the other site moves a page, changes domain or shuts down. They pile up silently on older content, and a page full of dead references reads as neglected.

The same goes for broken resources: images, scripts and stylesheets that return errors. A missing image is a visible hole; a missing script or stylesheet can break the page.

How to find broken links

Search Console’s Page indexing report lists some URLs Google found returning 404, but it only knows about links Google followed, and it doesn’t tell you which of your pages contain each link. To fix links you need both ends: the broken URL and every page that links to it. That takes a crawl that follows every link on the site and checks its status.

A good checker also avoids false alarms. Some responses aren’t evidence that a link is dead:

  • 401 and 403: the page exists but needs a login, or the site blocks automated requests.
  • 429: the other site is rate-limiting the crawler.

SEO Audit Hub doesn’t count those as dead links. It also keeps server errors and timeouts apart from 4xx pages, because they need different fixes: a page that timed out under load usually isn’t broken at all. Dead external links are reported against the pages that carry them, because that is where the edit happens: one dead URL cited by twenty pages is twenty edits.

How to fix each kind

The page moved: redirect it, then update the links

If the content still exists at a new URL, add a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. That rescues bookmarks and links from other sites. Then update your own links to the new URL directly, so they don’t depend on the redirect.

The page is gone for good: remove or replace the link

Point the link at the closest useful page, or remove it. Don’t redirect a deleted page to your homepage just to make the error go away; Google treats that as a soft 404 and it confuses visitors. Let the old URL return 404 or, better, 410.

A typo: correct it at the source

If the broken link appears on every page, it is in a template: the header, footer, sidebar or a reusable block. Fix it once there.

An external link died: find a new source

Look for the same content at its new address. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine often shows what the page said, which helps you find a replacement. If there is none, remove the link or rewrite the sentence that relied on it.

A redirect leads to an error

If a link goes to a URL that redirects, and the redirect target is broken, the redirect rule itself is stale. Repoint it at the page’s current URL.

Your sitemap lists broken URLs

A sitemap should only list pages that return 200 and that you want indexed. Regenerate it, or remove the dead entries.

How to stop new ones appearing

  • Add a redirect whenever you change a URL. Most CMSs and SEO plugins can do this automatically when you edit a slug.
  • Use relative links carefully in templates. A link that works on one page can break on another at a different depth.
  • Re-audit regularly. External links rot on their own schedule; a monthly crawl catches them before visitors do.