How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website
A practical checklist for finding broken links, redirect chains, and HTTP errors before they cost you traffic or SEO ranking.
Broken links quietly cost two things at once: visitors who hit a dead end and leave, and search engines that treat a page full of dead links as a lower-quality signal. Finding and fixing them is a fast, high-leverage maintenance task.
Scan the page, not just the ones you remember
Most broken links aren't the obvious ones — they're old links to pages that moved, third-party sites that changed their URL structure, or a typo from months ago that nobody noticed. A one-click scanner like Broken Link Doctor checks every link on a page at once instead of relying on you to remember which ones to check.
Understand what the status code is actually telling you
A 404 means the page is gone — fix or remove the link. A 5xx error often means a temporary server problem worth re-checking later. A 3xx redirect isn't necessarily broken, but a long redirect chain (a link that bounces through several redirects before landing) slows the page down and can dilute SEO value — those are worth updating to point directly at the final destination.
Prioritize by where the link lives
A broken link in your main navigation or footer — shown on every page — is a bigger priority than one broken link buried in a single old blog post. When you export a report, sort by how many pages a broken destination affects, not just the total count of broken links.
Fix internal links first, then audit outbound ones
Internal broken links are entirely within your control and the easiest wins. Outbound links to other websites break more often, since you don't control when those sites restructure — a periodic re-scan (monthly or quarterly, depending on how often you publish) catches these before they pile up.
Keep a report so fixes don't get lost
Exporting a detailed report before you start fixing links gives you a checklist to work through and a record of what was already found — useful if fixes are split across a team, or you want to compare before-and-after scans to confirm nothing new broke in the meantime.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do broken links actually hurt SEO?
Yes, indirectly — a page with many broken links signals lower quality to both visitors and search engines, and broken internal links waste crawl budget and dilute the value passed between your own pages.
Is every redirect a problem?
No — a single redirect to a valid destination is normal. Long redirect chains (multiple hops before reaching the final page) are the ones worth fixing.
Which broken links should I fix first?
Start with links that appear on many pages (navigation, footer, sidebar widgets) since fixing one instance fixes it everywhere it's used.
How often should I re-scan my site?
A monthly or quarterly scan is enough for most sites — more frequent publishing or heavy reliance on outbound links justifies checking more often.