Broken Links and SEO: How to Find & Fix Them (2026)
Broken links waste crawl budget, frustrate visitors, and leak link equity. Here's how to find and fix 404s across your whole site — fast.
A broken link points to a page that no longer exists (a 404) or to a server that doesn't respond. A few are normal on any site; a lot of them quietly drag down your SEO and your conversions.
Why broken links hurt
- Wasted crawl budget: Google spends time hitting dead URLs instead of your real pages.
- Leaked link equity: a link pointing to a 404 passes its authority into a dead end.
- Bad UX: visitors who hit a 404 usually bounce — and a frustrated user is a lost customer.
How to find them
Google Search Console's Pages report flags "Not found (404)" URLs Google has discovered. For internal links, a site crawler catches them all at once. For a quick single-page check, run the URL through the free Audit SEO tool.
How to fix them
- 301-redirect a removed page to the closest relevant live page (keeps the link equity).
- Update internal links that point to the old URL.
- Restore or recreate the page if it was deleted by mistake and still gets traffic.
Catch them site-wide
To crawl every URL automatically and get an ongoing broken-link report, a dedicated platform like Semrush or SE Ranking will flag every 404 and redirect chain across your site.
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