How to Fix Broken Links on Your Website (Internal, Outbound, and Inbound)

What are broken links?

A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a page that no longer exists or cannot be reached. Clicking it returns an error, most often a 404 Not Found status. Broken links happen when a page is deleted, a URL changes without a redirect, or a link is typed wrong. They occur on internal links, outbound links, and inbound backlinks.

The three types matter because each one has a different fix and a different owner.

Broken internal links are the most common. Broken inbound links, also called broken backlinks, are the most costly, because you earned that link and now it points at nothing.

What happens when a link is broken?

For a visitor, a broken link means an error page and a reason to leave. Few people go back and try another route. For a crawler like Googlebot, the link is a dead end. The crawl budget spent on that request is wasted, and the page it hoped to find is not there.

The status code decides what Google does next. Google documents its handling of HTTP status codes in its Search Central help. A 404 or 410 tells Google the page is gone, and it drops the URL from the index after repeated checks. A 5xx server error tells Google to slow down and try again later. A 200 page that only says "not found" is a soft 404, which Google treats as an error anyway.

When the broken link is an inbound backlink, there is one more loss. The authority that link would have passed to your page stops at the 404. Nothing carries through to the rest of your site. That is the main reason broken links SEO work is worth doing.

Why do broken links occur?

Almost every broken link comes from one of these causes. Knowing the cause tells you which fix to use.

• A page was deleted. Someone removed a product, post, or event page and did not redirect the URL.
• A URL changed. A slug was edited, a category was renamed, or the site moved to a new structure or domain without redirects.
• A typo in the link. A missing letter, a wrong slash, or a copied URL with extra characters.
• The other site changed. For outbound links, the target website deleted or moved the page, or shut down.
• A migration went wrong. Platform changes, https moves, and redesigns often break hundreds of links at once.
• Case or trailing slash mismatch. Some servers treat /Page and /page as different URLs.
• Files were moved. PDFs, images, and downloads get reorganized and the old paths die.

How to find broken links on a website

Before you get to how to fix broken links, you need a list. It has two columns for every broken link: the page the link is on, and the URL it points to. Without the source page you cannot fix anything. Here are the ways to build that list, from free to thorough.

Google Search Console

Open the Pages report and look for "Not found (404)" under the reasons pages are not indexed. This shows dead URLs Google tried to crawl, including ones that outside sites link to. Click a URL and use URL Inspection to see referring pages. It is free and uses Google's own crawl data, but it does not show every broken link on your site.

A site crawler

A crawler visits every page and records the status code of every link. This is the only method that finds every broken internal and outbound link with its source page. Zutrix Site Audit does this in the cloud. Screaming Frog does it on your desktop. Both export the source and target URL so you can work through the list.

A free broken link checker

Online tools such as the W3C Link Checker and Ahrefs' free broken link checker scan one page or a small site on demand. Browser extensions can highlight dead links on the page you are viewing. These are good for a quick check of one page. They are not a system for a whole site.

A backlink tool for inbound links

Broken backlinks do not show in a crawl of your site, because they live on other websites. A backlink tool lists every external page linking to you and the status code of the target. Filter for targets that return 404. Our guide on how to check backlinks walks through this.

How to fix broken links, step by step

Once you have the list, fixing is a sorting job. Work through it in this order.

1. 1

   Export the full list with source and target

   Pull every broken link from your crawler into a spreadsheet. You need the source page, the target URL, the status code, and the anchor text. Add a column for the fix you choose and one for the owner.

2. 2

   Sort by type and by impact

   Split the list into internal, outbound, and inbound links. Then sort internal links by how many pages contain them. A broken link in the footer appears on every page and should go first. A dead link in one old blog post can wait.

3. 3

   Fix internal links at the source

   If the target page still exists at a new URL, edit the link to point there directly. This is better than relying on a redirect, because it saves a hop for every user and crawler. If the link is in a template or menu, one edit fixes every page.

4. 4

   Redirect dead URLs that others point to

   When the target page is gone for good and outside sites or many internal pages link to it, add a 301 redirect to the most relevant live page. Google's redirect documentation confirms that a permanent redirect passes signals to the new URL. Do not send everything to the homepage. Google treats unrelated redirects as soft 404s.

5. 5

   Fix or remove outbound links

   For a link to another site, first check whether the page moved. Search the site for the title. If it is gone, look for a copy on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and link to that, or find a similar live source. If nothing fits, remove the link and keep the text. Our post on outbound links covers when they are worth keeping.

6. 6

   Recover broken backlinks

   For each dead URL with backlinks, choose the closest live page and set a 301 redirect. If the old content was valuable and nothing replaces it, consider restoring the page instead. Either way, the link value starts flowing again without asking anyone to change their link.

7. 7

   Verify and recrawl

   After the changes ship, open a few fixed links in a private browser window and confirm they load. Then run the crawler again. The broken link count should drop to near zero. Anything left is either new or missed.

8. 8

   Set up monitoring

   Schedule a crawl at least monthly and after every release. Watch the 404 reasons in Search Console. Broken links come back as pages change, and catching them early is far cheaper than another cleanup.

How to restore a link to a deleted page

Sometimes the right fix is not a redirect. If a deleted page had good backlinks or steady traffic, bring it back. Restore it from your CMS trash or a backup. If neither exists, the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org often has a saved copy you can rebuild from.

Publish the restored page at the original URL so every existing link works again. If you must use a new URL, redirect the old one to it. Then request indexing in Search Console so Google picks it up quickly.

Redirect, update, or remove? A quick decision guide

Three questions settle almost every case.

1. 1.Does the content still exist somewhere on your site? If yes, update internal links to the new URL and redirect the old URL for everyone else.
2. 2.Do outside sites link to the dead URL? If yes, redirect it to the closest related live page, or restore it. Never leave a linked URL as a 404.
3. 3.Is there nothing related and no backlinks? Then return a clean 404 or 410 and remove your internal links to it. A 410 tells Google the removal is deliberate.

How to prevent broken links in the first place

Broken links are one item on a longer list. Our technical SEO checklist covers the rest, including redirects, sitemaps, and duplicate URLs, which share the same root causes.