How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website

Start with pages visitors actually use

Check your navigation, contact page, popular guides and important product or service pages first. A dead booking link deserves attention before an obscure citation in an old post. After moving pages or changing a menu, check the pages that still point to the old addresses.

Keep a simple record: source page, link text, destination, status, proposed fix and date checked. The source page is where you edit the link; the destination is where it goes. Mixing them up can leave the original problem untouched even after you publish a new page.

Run a page check and read its coverage

Open Broken Link Checker, enter a public page URL and run the check. It reads one HTML page up to 512 KiB and tests up to 20 unique HTTP or HTTPS links. It does not crawl the whole site or execute JavaScript, so a clean report is not proof that every link on your website works.

Read the discovered-link count and any unchecked results before drawing conclusions. The service has a time limit and may stop before all listed links finish. For a full-site review, use a crawler with suitable coverage and inspect its exclusions. Links added only after JavaScript runs need a rendered-page check.

Separate missing pages from blocked checks

A 404 response means the requested resource was not found; 410 says it is gone. Check for typing mistakes and whether the page moved. A redirect is not automatically broken: inspect the final destination in the report and confirm it still answers the promise in the link text.

A 403 can be an access block, 405 can mean the server rejects the HEAD method used by the check, and 429 indicates too many requests. Timeouts, TLS failures and server errors also need investigation. Open the destination normally and recheck later where appropriate; do not delete a useful link solely because an automated request failed.

Choose the fix that matches the problem

For a typo, edit the link on the source page. For a moved page you control, link directly to the new address and consider a permanent redirect from the old one for existing visitors and references. Use a relevant replacement. Sending every retired URL to the homepage usually leaves people without the information they wanted.

For a missing external source, find the publisher’s current page and check that it supports the same statement. If no suitable source remains, revise the passage or remove the link. You cannot install a redirect on a website you do not control. If the page is intentionally gone with no replacement, keeping a genuine 404 or 410 can be appropriate.

A small repair example

Suppose a guide links “Download the checklist” to /downloads/checklist-old.pdf, which returns 404. You confirm that /downloads/checklist.pdf contains the current checklist. Update the link in the guide, test the new PDF, and add a redirect from the old URL if you control it and the replacement serves the same purpose. This is an illustrative example, not a finding from your site.

Recheck the published page and its destination

Publish the edit, then check the actual public page rather than just the editor preview. Confirm the destination’s content as well as its HTTP response: a 200 status can still show an error message, login screen or unrelated content. Test important buttons manually, including page-section links that a status check cannot validate.

Mark the repair complete only after checking the source link and destination together. Review important paths after site changes and on a schedule that fits how often you publish. Fixing broken links improves the visit; it does not guarantee a ranking increase or explain every traffic drop.