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How-to guide · 4 steps

How to Find Broken Links on Your Site (And Fix Them)

Broken links damage your site in two ways: they waste crawl budget and frustrate users who land on a dead end. Internal broken links also bleed link equity — the authority that was flowing through those links now goes nowhere. Finding and fixing them is a quick technical SEO win.

  1. CrawlFind links returning 404 or errors.
  2. Sort by typeInternal links vs links to other sites.
  3. Fix internal firstUpdate the link or redirect the old URL.
  4. Replace or remove externalPoint to a working source.
  5. Re-crawl on a scheduleNew breaks appear as sites change.

  1. Step 1: Crawl your site to find all broken internal links

    Run a full site crawl and filter for 4xx errors. Internal broken links (links within your site that point to non-existent pages) are the priority — they directly affect how Google crawls your site and how link equity is distributed.

    Tool for this stepSemrush

    from $139/mo

    Semrush's Site Audit lists every broken internal link with the source page, destination URL, and anchor text. You can click through to fix each one directly from the report.

    Semrush plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Seobility (from €59.90/mo)

  2. Step 2: Find broken external links

    External broken links (links to other sites that no longer work) are less harmful to SEO but still damage user experience. Audit these separately — for blog content, broken external links signal to users that your content is out of date.

    Tool for this stepAhrefs

    from £23/mo

    Ahrefs' Site Audit includes a dedicated broken external links check. For large sites with lots of outbound links, this is faster than checking them manually.

    Ahrefs plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Seobility (from €59.90/mo)

  3. Step 3: Fix internal broken links by updating or redirecting

    For each broken internal link: if the destination page was moved, update the link to the new URL. If the page was deleted and won't be restored, remove the link or redirect the dead URL to the most relevant existing page with a 301 redirect.

    Tool for this stepRank Math Pro

    from €7.99/mo billed yearly

    Rank Math's redirection manager lets you create 301 redirects directly in WordPress without touching .htaccess. It also includes a 404 monitor so you can spot new dead URLs.

    Rank Math Pro plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Seobility (from €59.90/mo)

  4. Step 4: Monitor for new broken links regularly

    Schedule a monthly crawl to catch any new broken links that appear when you delete pages, restructure URLs, or external sites go offline. Catching broken links early means less crawl budget wasted and faster fixes.

    Tool for this stepSemrush

    from $139/mo

    Semrush Site Audit can run on a weekly or monthly schedule automatically — emailing you a report when new issues appear. Set it and let it do the monitoring for you.

    Semrush plans and catches

    Alternative to consider: Morningscore (from $69/mo)