How to Find and Fix Dead Links With the Broken Link Checker
This guide explains how to turn the Broken Link Checker output into practical decisions while keeping operational instructions on the tool page.
What Are Broken Links and Why Do They Hurt SEO?
A broken link is any hyperlink that points to a page that no longer exists — returning a 404 error instead of live content. Broken links hurt SEO in two ways: they waste crawl budget (Googlebot spends time following links that lead nowhere), and they interrupt the flow of PageRank through your site (authority that should pass to the linked page is lost). They also create a poor user experience — a visitor who clicks a link and hits a 404 page is significantly less likely to continue browsing your site.
Broken links accumulate silently over time. External sites you link to delete or move their content, your own pages get renamed or removed, and URL structures change during migrations. A site that was fully healthy six months ago can have dozens of broken links today without anyone noticing until a ranking drop prompts an audit.
How to Use This Broken Link Checker
Enter any URL and click Check. The tool crawls the page and tests every outgoing link — both internal links to other pages on your site and external links to third-party sites — returning a list of all links with their HTTP status codes. Any link returning 404, 410, 500, or a redirect chain is flagged as broken or problematic. Export the results to CSV for a systematic fix list.
For large sites, run the checker on your highest-traffic pages first — these pages lose the most authority from broken internal links, and fixing them has the highest immediate impact. Then work through the rest systematically. For broken external links, either remove the link, replace it with a link to a working equivalent source, or use the Wayback Machine to find an archived version of the original page.
Broken Link Building: Turning a Bug Into a Strategy
Broken link building is one of the most effective white-hat link acquisition strategies: find broken links on other sites in your niche, identify which of your pages covers the same topic as the dead destination, and reach out to the site owner offering your page as a replacement. The outreach pitch is natural — you're helping them fix a problem on their site, not asking for a favour. This strategy works because site owners have an incentive to fix broken links, and your page is a ready-made solution. Use this checker on competitor sites and high-authority resource pages in your niche to build a pipeline of outreach opportunities.
Related tools: Redirect Checker · SEO Audit Tool · Backlink Checker