How to Fix Broken Links on Your Website (Step-by-Step Guide)

You click a link on a website and get a "404 Not Found" page. Annoying, right? Now imagine that happening to your visitors — or worse, to Google's crawler. Broken links are one of the most common SEO problems on the web, and they're silently costing you traffic every day they go unfixed.

The good news: broken links are easy to find and straightforward to fix. This guide walks you through the entire process, from understanding what causes them to actually resolving every single one.

What Are Broken Links?

A broken link is any hyperlink that points to a page or resource that no longer exists. When someone (or a search engine bot) follows that link, they get an error instead of the page they expected. The most common error is a 404 "Not Found," but broken links can also result in 500 server errors, timeout errors, or redirect loops.

There are two types to think about:

• Internal broken links: Links within your own site that point to pages you've moved, deleted, or renamed
• External broken links: Links from your site to other websites that have gone offline or changed their URLs

Both types matter, but internal broken links are entirely within your control — and they're the ones Google cares about most when evaluating your site quality.

Why Broken Links Hurt Your SEO

It's tempting to think a few broken links aren't a big deal. But they compound. Here's what actually happens when your site has broken links:

Wasted Crawl Budget

Google allocates a limited "crawl budget" to your site — the number of pages it will crawl in a given period. Every time Googlebot hits a broken link, it wastes part of that budget on a dead end instead of discovering or re-indexing your actual content. For small sites this is minor. For sites with hundreds or thousands of pages, it adds up fast.

Lost Link Equity

Links pass authority (sometimes called "link juice") between pages. When a page links to a 404, that authority disappears into a void. If external sites are linking to a page you deleted without setting up a redirect, you're throwing away backlink value that took months or years to build.

Poor User Experience

Google's algorithm increasingly factors in user experience signals. When visitors hit dead pages, they bounce. High bounce rates and short session durations tell Google your site isn't delivering what people want.

Trust and Credibility

This one's simple: a site full of broken links looks unmaintained. Visitors lose trust, and they're less likely to convert, subscribe, or come back.

How to Find Broken Links on Your Site

You can't fix what you can't find. Here are the most reliable ways to identify broken links:

1. Run a Site Scan

The fastest approach is to use a crawler that checks every link on your site automatically. AuditMySite's free scanner crawls your pages and flags every broken internal and external link it finds, along with the exact page where each broken link lives. It takes about 30 seconds for most sites.

2. Check Google Search Console

In Google Search Console, go to Pages (under Indexing) and look for pages with "Not found (404)" errors. These are URLs that Google tried to crawl but couldn't reach. The limitation here is that Search Console only shows pages Google has already tried to index — it won't catch every broken link on your site.

3. Check Your Server Logs

If you have access to your web server logs, filter for 404 responses. This shows you every broken URL that real users and bots are hitting, including URLs that aren't linked from your site anymore but are still being requested (from bookmarks, external sites, etc.).

4. Manual Spot Checks

For smaller sites, you can manually click through your navigation, footer links, and key pages. This is tedious and incomplete, but it's better than nothing if you're just getting started.

How to Fix Broken Links: Step by Step

Once you have your list of broken links, work through them using this priority order:

Step 1: Fix or Restore the Target Page

Sometimes the simplest fix is to bring the page back. If you accidentally deleted a page or changed its URL, restore it or create a new version at the original URL. This is especially important if external sites link to that URL — you don't want to lose those backlinks.

Step 2: Set Up 301 Redirects

If the page has permanently moved to a new URL, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This tells both users and search engines where the content lives now, and it passes most of the link equity to the new URL.

In most setups, you can add redirects in your .htaccess file (Apache), nginx.conf, or through your CMS. In Next.js, use the redirects array in next.config.js. In WordPress, plugins like Redirection make this painless.

Step 3: Update the Link

If a link points to an external site that's gone or changed its URL structure, update the link to point to the correct new URL. If the external resource no longer exists at all, either remove the link or find an alternative resource to link to.

Step 4: Remove Dead Links

For links where there's no suitable redirect target or replacement, just remove the link entirely. An unlinked mention is better than a link that goes nowhere.

Step 5: Verify Your Fixes

After making changes, run another scan to confirm everything resolves correctly. Run a quick scan with AuditMySite to make sure your fixes actually worked and you didn't introduce any new broken links in the process.

How to Prevent Broken Links Going Forward

Fixing broken links once is good. Keeping them fixed is better. Here are habits that prevent them from coming back:

• Always redirect when you change URLs. Every time you rename, reorganize, or delete a page, add a 301 redirect from the old URL.
• Audit regularly. Monthly or quarterly scans catch problems before they pile up.
• Use relative URLs for internal links when possible — they're less likely to break during domain or protocol changes.
• Be careful with external links. External sites change without warning. Periodically check that your outbound links still work.
• Create a custom 404 page. When broken links do happen (they will), a helpful 404 page with navigation and search can salvage the visit instead of losing the user entirely.

Common Causes of Broken Links

Understanding why broken links happen helps you prevent them:

• Site redesigns and migrations: The #1 cause. Changing your URL structure or CMS without proper redirects breaks every old link.
• Deleted content: Removing pages or blog posts without redirects.
• Typos in URLs: A simple spelling mistake in an href creates a broken link that can go unnoticed for months.
• External sites changing: You linked to someone else's page and they moved or deleted it.
• Domain changes: Switching domains without comprehensive redirect mapping.

Bottom Line

Broken links are one of those SEO issues that feels minor but has an outsized impact when left unchecked. They hurt your rankings, waste crawl budget, leak link equity, and frustrate your visitors. The fix is straightforward: find them, redirect or remove them, and build habits to prevent them.

Start with a free scan to see how many broken links your site has right now. You might be surprised.