Broken Link

What Is a Broken Link?

Every broken link is a missed opportunity — for conversions, user satisfaction, and ranking power. Run regular checks with Screaming Frog or Lighthouse and fix broken links with correct URLs or 301 redirects. For external broken links pointing to your site, you can contact the linking website and request a correction — this is called Link Reclamation and is a valuable SEO lever.

A Broken Link is a defective hyperlink that leads nowhere — meaning the target page no longer exists or is unreachable. A typical broken link displays a 404 error message (page not found). Broken links occur when linked pages are deleted, domains expire, or URLs change without redirects being set up. Broken links harm user experience (users land on error pages) and also negatively affect SEO because Crawl Budget is wasted and Link Equity is lost.

Search engine bots follow broken links and land on error pages, which costs crawl budget — the valuable resources Google allocates to crawling your website. Every click on a broken link is a missed opportunity for a conversion or further page views. Internally linked broken links also harm the site structure and user flow. When you link to an external website and that page gets deleted, you lose not only the crawl effort but also the opportunity for potential conversions.

For your website, you should run regular broken link checks with tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or the free Lighthouse. Fix internal broken links with correct URLs or redirects. For external broken links, you can try to contact the linking source and repair the broken link — this is called Link Reclamation. Also make sure that URLs you delete or change are properly forwarded with 301 redirects (permanent redirects) to avoid broken links.