How to Find and Fix Broken Links

A broken link is a promise your site doesn't keep. A visitor clicks expecting a page and lands on a 404; a search crawler follows the link and wastes budget on a dead end. A handful won't sink you - but they pile up quietly as pages move and external sites disappear. This guide shows how to find every broken link on your site, fix it, and confirm the fix actually held.

[IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER_06]Site Audit dashboard showing the overall health score and issue categories including Links

Run a crawl, then open the Links report to see every broken link the audit found.

Why broken links hurt SEO and UX

Wasted crawl budget - search engines spend requests following links to nowhere instead of indexing real pages.
Lost link equity - a broken internal link passes no authority to the page it was meant to support.
Worse user experience - dead ends increase bounce and erode trust.
Stale external references - links to sites that have moved or shut down make your content look unmaintained.

Finding broken links in a site audit

Manually clicking links doesn't scale past a few pages. A full crawl checks every link on every page in one pass and groups the failures for you.

Run a full crawl of your site from the Site Audit dashboard.
Open the Links report to see broken links grouped by issue type.
Or open the Link Explorer and apply the Broken preset to browse every failing link by source page, with its anchor text and status code.

[IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER_07]Link Explorer filtered to the Broken preset, showing source page, target URL, anchor text and status code

Link Explorer's Broken preset lists each dead link with the page it lives on.

The issue types you'll see

The Links report separates problems so you can fix the right thing:

Broken internal link - a link to another page on your own site that returns 4xx/5xx. These are fully in your control; fix them first.
Broken external link - a link to another site that's now dead. Update or remove it.
Redirect chain / loop - the link works but bounces through multiple hops. Point it straight at the final URL.
HTTP link on an HTTPS page / mixed content - an insecure link or asset on a secure page.

Fixing them

Broken internal links - update the URL to the correct page, or restore/redirect the missing one.
Broken external links - swap in a live source or delete the link if no equivalent exists.
Redirect chains - edit the link to target the final destination directly so no hops remain.
Stuck on a fix? Open the AI fix guide on the issue for step-by-step instructions tailored to that issue type.

[IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER_08]AI-generated fix guide modal for a broken link issue

Each issue type has a fix guide you can open without leaving the report.

Verifying the fix with Recheck

Don't assume a fix worked - confirm it. Recheck re-crawls only the URLs you fixed for that one issue type and tells you how many now pass, which are fixed, and which are still failing. It's the difference between "I think I fixed it" and a clean report.

Track progress across crawls

After a round of fixes, run a fresh audit and use Compare to see broken links move from "persistent" to "fixed" between the two crawls.

What's the difference between internal and external broken links?

Internal broken links point to pages on your own site and are fully in your control to fix. External broken links point to other sites that have moved or shut down - you update or remove them.

How does Recheck confirm a fix?

It re-crawls just the URLs you fixed for a specific issue type and reports how many now pass, so you confirm the fix without re-running a full crawl.

Can I export the list of broken links?

Yes. The audit's export reports include link reports by response code, so you can pull a CSV of every 4xx/5xx link to work through offline.

How often should I check for broken links?

Schedule a recurring crawl. Links break over time as pages move and external sites change, so a one-time fix won't stay clean on its own.