Broken links: How to find, fix and prevent 404s

Broken links are dead ends on your site. They frustrate readers, waste crawl budget, and chip away at search rankings. If your site shows "404 not found" or leads to missing images and pages, this guide gives clear steps to fix them fast.

Find broken links quickly

Start with a crawl. Use Google Search Console to see 404 pages Google found. Run a full audit with Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to list internal and external broken URLs. For a quick check, try the free Broken Link Checker or the W3C Link Checker. Don't forget to scan sitemaps and XML feeds; broken links there can mislead search engines.

Also open your top traffic pages and click every important link. Automated tools catch most problems, but a manual pass spots context issues like wrong anchor text or links that point to wrong sections.

Fix what matters first

Prioritize high-value pages: pages with strong traffic, backlinks, or revenue impact. For each broken URL, pick one of three fixes: repair, redirect, or remove. If the destination moved, set a 301 redirect to the new page. If the content no longer exists but a similar page is available, redirect there. If the link was a mistake, update it to the correct URL or remove it entirely.

For external links that point to dead pages, update them to a live resource or link to an archived version via the Wayback Machine. Avoid redirect chains; each extra redirect reduces page speed and wastes link equity. After changes, re-crawl the site and verify the fixes in Search Console.

Use rel=canonical sparingly - only when you deliberately want search engines to treat a different URL as the main version. Soft 404s (pages that return 200 but show "not found" content) confuse crawlers, so return a proper 404 or 410 when needed.

Keep a simple spreadsheet: broken URL, source page, priority, chosen fix, date fixed. That makes follow-up easy and shows progress to your team or client.

Prevent future broken links. Add a scheduled link audit - monthly for small sites, weekly for large ones. Use CMS plugins or site-monitoring tools that alert you when links fail. When you move content, update internal links and your sitemap at the same time. Prefer relative URLs for internal links to lower the chance of typos when you change domains or protocols.

Finally, treat broken links as an SEO and UX issue. Fixing them improves user trust, reduces bounce rates, and preserves ranking signals from inbound links. Small maintenance like this pays off fast.

Need a quick checklist? Audit, prioritize, fix with 301s or content updates, re-crawl, and set up regular monitoring. Do that, and your site will stop losing visitors to dead ends.

If you want help, run a free check: paste your homepage into a link checker, export the list and share it with your dev. Prioritize pages that drive traffic. Or hire a freelancer for a one-time sweep to fix redirects and broken anchors.