Broken Link

What is a Broken Link?

A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a page or resource that does not exist. Most often, these linked pages were deleted or moved without a redirection set up.

When the user or crawler follows a broken link, the server returns a 404 (Not found) or 410 (Gone) status code.

In SEO, broken links are divided into:

• Broken outgoing links (often called simply “broken links”) - the links from your page or website and
• Broken backlinks - links to your website from other domains.

Do broken links hurt your website?

Having broken outgoing links and broken backlinks is perfectly normal for any website. The Internet is dynamic: pages and whole websites are being deleted constantly.

However, having too many broken outgoing links can lead to a poor user experience for your visitors. On top of that, it’s also an unnecessary waste of your crawl budget because 404 pages are a “dead end” for search engine crawlers.

Broken backlinks are also a wasted opportunity. The backlinks that lead to 404 pages on your site could instead pass value and authority (link equity) to live relevant pages on your site, increasing their chances to rank.

How to find and fix broken links on your website?

In Ahrefs’ Site Explorer

If you’re looking for a quick way to find broken outgoing links of any website, you can use Site Explorer.

Type in a domain and open the Broken links report in the Outgoing links section.

This report will show you all outgoing broken links on a website that Ahresf knows of. It’s a very good place for finding broken link-building opportunities.

However, the Ahrefs database may not have data on all links and pages of a particular website.

With Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

For the website you own, you can use an SEO crawler like our free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.

Let it crawl your whole website and the linked external pages (make sure that the “Check HTTP status of external links” option is enabled).

To see external broken pages linked from your website, go to:
External Pages -> Issues -> External 4XX

To find internal broken pages, open:
Internal Pages -> Issues -> 4XX Page

Click on the reported 404 URLs to see pages that link to them.

Fixing broken links on your website

Fixing broken links is simple but could be time-consuming, depending on how many you find. You can fix broken outgoing links by:

• Replacing the broken link with a relevant live link
• Removing the link
• Redirecting the 404 page (for broken internal links on your website)

How to find and fix broken backlinks?

To find broken backlinks, you’ll need an backlink checker SEO tool that provides broken lick checking opportunities, such as Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer has a specific “Broken backlinks” report? but thre’s a more handy way to work with broken backlinks.

Go to:

Site Explorer -> yourdomain.com -> Pages -> Best by Links -> add a “404 not found” HTTP response filter.

How to fix broken backlinks

Fixing broken backlinks takes a different approach. Unlike broken links on your own site, you can’t simply edit broken backlinks.

You can fix broken backlinks in a few ways:

Option 1: Reach out to the linking website and ask for a fix. If there’s a contact option on the website, try sending a message asking them to replace the broken link with a relevant one. They may appreciate the opportunity to improve their user experience, and you get a fixed link. 

Option 2: Recreate the deleted page. Find out what the content of the gone page was and recreate it. If you’re having trouble figuring out what the page used to be, you can try plugging it into Wayback Machine.

Option 3: Redirect the URL to another relevant URL. A simple fix is to redirect the broken link to a relevant URL. This may be the same content at a different URL that you forgot to redirect or different but relevant content that would still make sense (for instance, replacing a broken link for “how to choose an seo tool” with a link to an article titled “what to look for in an seo tool”). 

Option 4: Do nothing and leave it be a 404. If the page does not have any valuable backlinks and you don’t have many 404 s on your site, it’s fine to have broken backlinks.