Check for Broken Links on Website
Checking for broken links on a website means crawling pages to find hyperlinks that return HTTP errors like 404 or 410.
If you have ever run a single crawl and called it done, you know missing broken links hurts crawl efficiency and user trust.
Key points
- Crawl your entire site, not just the homepage, to catch all broken links buried in deeper pages.
- Prioritise fixing internal broken links first; they waste crawl budget and spread link equity poorly.
- Use Google Search Console alongside a dedicated crawler to cover pages no longer in the index.
- Schedule repeated broken link checks because site changes constantly create new dead ends.
- When fixing a broken link, consider whether a 301 redirect or replacement content works better than removing it.
A fashion blog finds 34 broken internal links
A fashion blog with 200 pages ran a site audit and found 34 broken internal links. The homepage had none, but category pages averaged 3 broken links each. Seven of those were key product pages now gone, causing a 12% drop in indexed product pages. Fixing them with 301 redirects restored 90% of lost pages within a month.
Three common mistakes when checking broken links
- Only checking the homepage Crawling only the homepage misses broken links in category, product, and blog pages, giving a false sense of site health.
- Ignoring internal broken links Internal broken links waste crawl budget and prevent link equity from flowing to your important pages, damaging SEO.
- Relying solely on Search Console Search Console only shows broken pages it has indexed, missing links that return 404s but aren't yet reported.
Three steps to fix a broken link
- Update the URL If the target page moved to a new location, replace the broken URL with the correct URL to restore the link.
- Add a 301 redirect When the original page no longer exists, set up a 301 redirect from the broken URL to the nearest relevant page.
- Remove the link If no suitable replacement page exists, delete the broken link entirely to avoid confusing users and crawlers. Before removing, check whether a redirect from a similar page could preserve some value.
Common questions
How to check broken links in Excel?
Excel itself cannot crawl hyperlinks; use a crawl tool or a VBA macro to extract links and test them for errors.
What is the best free dead link checker?
The best free dead link checker depends on scale: W3C Link Checker for single pages, Screaming Frog for full sites (up to 500 URLs).
Sources
- Google Search Console Help How to find 404 errors and broken pages in Search Console reports.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider Documentation Step-by-step guide to crawling a site and finding broken links.
- W3C Link Checker Free online tool to check individual pages or recursively scan linked documents.