Workflow
Broken Link Audits
How to run a broken link audit: gather the links worth checking, separate real 404s from blocked or temporary failures, and decide whether to fix, redirect or remove each one.
Broken links waste visitors’ time and send search engines to dead ends. They come from deleted pages, renamed URLs, expired partner sites and simple typos, and most sites gather them faster than anyone notices.
A useful audit doesn’t stop at a list of 404s. It tells you which failures are real, which links matter most, and what to do about each one.
Not every failure is a broken link
A 404 or 410 means the page is gone. A 403 often means the site blocks automated checks while working fine for people. A 429 means you checked too quickly. Timeouts and DNS errors can be temporary. Re-check anything that isn’t a clear 404 before removing a link.
Fix, redirect or remove
For internal links, update the link to the page’s current URL, or add a redirect if the old URL is linked from elsewhere. For external links, replace them with a current source or remove them. Links in old blog posts are worth keeping working if those posts still get traffic.
Running the audit
- Crawl your site from the homepage to find internal pages that return errors (up to 100 pages per crawl)
- Add external links you care about, such as partner, documentation or affiliate links
- Check the full list and filter by Broken, Server errors, DNS failures, SSL issues and Timeouts
- Re-check uncertain results (403, 429 and timeouts) before acting on them
- Fix internal links first, then external ones on your most visited pages
- Export the list as CSV to track the fixes, then re-run it to confirm
Limits to keep in mind
A “soft 404”, a missing page that still returns 200, can’t be detected from the status code alone; only a 200 response with an empty body is flagged.
The crawler follows links from its starting page, so pages nothing links to won’t be checked unless you add them.
Common questions
- Do broken links hurt SEO?
- A few broken outbound links won’t sink a site, but broken internal links waste crawl activity and stop link value reaching your pages. They also frustrate visitors, which is reason enough to fix them.
- How often should I check for broken links?
- After every site restructure or large content change, and otherwise on a regular schedule that fits how often your content changes, such as monthly or quarterly.