Broken links are links that point to pages that no longer exist, returning a 404 “Not Found” error. Every site accumulates them over time, usually because a page was moved, renamed, deleted, or because an external site you linked to took down the page you cited.

Broken links don’t directly tank your rankings. Google’s official position is that 404s are a normal part of the web. But they waste crawl budget, hurt user experience, and signal a site that isn’t being maintained. At scale, that adds up.

This post covers what broken links actually do to your SEO, how to find them, and how to fix the ones that matter.

What broken links actually do

To user experience

A visitor clicks a link (from your site, social media, or a Google result) and lands on a 404 page. Best case: they hit the back button and try again. Worst case: they leave your site entirely. On social and email campaigns, a broken link can permanently lose that click.

To SEO

Google treats 404s as a normal part of the web and doesn’t penalize a page for returning one. That page just gets removed from the index. However:

• Broken links waste your crawl budget. Googlebot has a limited amount of attention per site, and every 404 is a wasted crawl
• If a broken URL is linked to from authoritative external sites, you’re losing the ranking value that page used to carry
• Too many broken internal links signal low site quality to both users and search engines over time

To authority flow

When an external site links to a URL on your domain that now 404s, the link equity is wasted. Redirecting the 404 to a relevant live page recovers that equity.

Types of broken links

There are three categories, each with different fixes.

Internal broken links

Links from one page on your site to another page on your site that no longer exists. Fix by updating the link to point to a valid page, or redirecting the old URL.

External broken links (outbound)

Links from your site to external pages that no longer exist. Fix by updating to a replacement URL, linking to an archived version via the Wayback Machine, or removing the link entirely if there’s no good alternative.

External broken links (inbound)

Links from other sites pointing to dead URLs on your site. You can’t fix the source, but you can redirect the dead URL on your side to recover the link equity.

How to find broken links

For small sites (under 100 pages):

• Google Search Console: Pages, Not indexed, Not found (404) will surface most issues
• Manual check: click through your highest-traffic pages in a browser

For medium to large sites:

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free for up to 500 URLs, paid for more). Best tool for comprehensive broken link discovery
• Ahrefs Site Audit or Semrush Site Audit (both paid). Crawl your site on a schedule and flag broken links
• Dr. Link Check (free tier available): quick one-off crawls
• W3C Link Checker: free, slower, good for small sites

For inbound broken links (other sites linking to dead pages on yours):

• Ahrefs: Site Explorer, Best by links, filter by 404
• Semrush: Backlink Analytics, Lost/Broken pages
• Google Search Console: Pages, Not indexed, Not found (404)

How to fix broken links

Option 1: Update the link

If the broken link is on your site and points to a page that moved, just update the URL in the source content. Quick and clean.

Option 2: 301 redirect

For URLs that matter (pages with inbound links, decent traffic, or external citations), set up a 301 redirect from the broken URL to the closest relevant live page. 301 tells search engines “this page has permanently moved,” and passes link equity to the new destination.

On WordPress:

• Rank Math has a built-in redirect module
• Yoast Premium has the same
• The free Redirection plugin handles this well
• For hosting-level redirects, use your .htaccess file or CDN rules

Option 3: Custom 404 page

Every site needs a useful 404 page. A good 404 page:

• Tells the user the page isn’t found
• Offers search, navigation to top pages, or relevant links
• Matches your site’s design (doesn’t look like a broken theme file)

Most WordPress themes have a 404.php template (classic themes) or a 404 template in the Site Editor (block themes).

Option 4: Let it 404

Not every dead URL needs a redirect. If the page truly has no equivalent and no meaningful inbound links, a clean 404 is fine. Redirecting to the homepage or a loosely related page is worse than a proper 404, because Google treats those as “soft 404s” and flags them as a quality issue.

301 vs 302 vs 307 redirects

• 301: permanent. Use this 90% of the time
• 302: temporary. Only use if the redirect really is temporary (seasonal promo, A/B test)
• 307: temporary (HTTP/1.1 version of 302). Functionally similar

Google treats 301s and 302s similarly in terms of passing link equity now, but 301 signals intent more clearly.

Don’t redirect everything

Every 301 adds a small amount of latency (usually 20 to 100ms). A chain of redirects (301 to 301 to 301 to final page) causes real performance issues and wastes crawl budget. Best practices:

• Keep redirects flat: one hop from old URL to final destination
• Audit redirects every 6 months and clean up chains
• Don’t redirect old content to your homepage just to avoid 404s. Google treats that as a soft 404

WordPress-specific workflow

My standard broken-link maintenance workflow:

1. Monthly: check Rank Math’s 404 monitor (or the Redirection plugin’s log) for new 404s
2. Quarterly: run a Screaming Frog crawl to catch broken outbound links
3. Every content restructure: verify URL structure doesn’t change, and redirect anything that did (see SEO slugs)
4. Before any site migration or theme switch: export all URLs, do the migration, redirect everything that changed. See does changing a WordPress theme affect SEO

Edge cases

Linking rot on old blog posts

Every old post has external links that eventually die. The Wayback Machine is your friend. When updating an old post, swap dead external links for their Wayback equivalents or for current live alternatives.

Moving to a new domain

If you’re switching domains, set up 301 redirects from every old URL to the new equivalent before switching DNS. Without this, every piece of SEO equity the old domain built up is lost.

Legacy URL structures

If your site still has URLs like /?p=123 from a decade ago, those pages may still be indexed. Redirect them to the pretty permalink version. Missing this is one of the most common slow-bleed SEO issues on older WordPress sites.

The short version

Broken links are a normal part of running a website. They don’t directly hurt rankings, but they waste crawl budget, hurt users, and leak link equity. Use Search Console to find them, fix internal ones by updating the link, and use 301 redirects for important URLs that changed. Don’t redirect everything to the homepage, and do give your site a proper 404 page.