Technical SEO
Broken Links
Hyperlinks that point to a page which no longer exists, commonly resulting in a 404 error, wasting link equity and hurting user experience.
What Is Broken Links?
A broken link is a hyperlink that no longer resolves to a working page. This usually happens because the destination page was deleted, moved without a redirect, or the target site changed its URL structure entirely, and it typically shows a visitor a "404 Not Found" error. Broken links can exist internally (a link from one page on a site to another page on the same site that no longer exists) or externally (a link on your site pointing out to a page on someone else's site that's since disappeared). Either way, broken links create two distinct problems. First, they hurt the experience of any visitor who clicks them, since they hit a dead end instead of the content they expected. Second, from an SEO standpoint, they can waste "link equity" — the ranking value a link was meant to pass — because it now flows nowhere useful instead of to a live, relevant page. Finding and fixing (or replacing) broken links is a routine SEO maintenance task, and identifying broken links on other sites is also a well-known outreach tactic, since a webmaster is often happy to swap a dead link for a working replacement.
Why Broken Links Matters for SEO
User experience and trust
A site riddled with dead links reads as neglected or unreliable, which erodes visitor trust quickly.
Wasted link equity
Both internal and external links that dead-end fail to pass along whatever ranking value they were meant to contribute.
Crawl efficiency
Search engine crawlers spend part of a site's limited crawl budget on dead ends, which is a small but real drag on how efficiently new or updated pages get discovered.
A Simple Example
An SEO auditor runs a crawl of a client's site and finds fifteen internal links pointing to a product category that was removed six months ago. Each of those links currently sends visitors (and crawlers) to a 404 page. Fixing them — either restoring a redirect to the closest relevant category or updating the links to point elsewhere — reclaims that lost link equity and improves the visitor experience immediately.
Best Practices
- Run periodic site-wide link audits rather than waiting for user complaints.
- Set up 301 redirects whenever a page is permanently removed or its URL changes.
- Prioritize fixing broken links on high-traffic or high-authority pages first.
- Use broken-link discovery on other sites as a genuine, helpful outreach opener, not just a link-building pretext.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Deleting or moving pages without setting up a redirect, silently breaking every existing link to that URL.
- Ignoring broken external links in older content, leaving readers to hit dead ends indefinitely.
- Redirecting broken links to unrelated pages just to avoid a 404, which confuses users just as much.
- Treating a one-time link audit as sufficient rather than an ongoing maintenance habit.
Key Takeaways
- A broken link points to a page that no longer exists, typically producing a 404 error.
- Broken links waste link equity and damage user experience.
- Regular audits and proper redirects are the standard fix.
- Finding broken links on other sites is a legitimate, common link-building outreach tactic.