Broken Links

What are Broken Links?

Broken links are hyperlinks on your website that lead to pages that no longer exist (404 error) or are not reachable (500 error, 503 error). Instead of leading to the expected content, users land on an error page.

A broken link can be:

• An internal link to a deleted or moved page
• An external link to a website that is offline or has deleted the page
• A link with a typo in the URL
• A link to a protocol or format that is no longer supported

Broken links are harmful for SEO, user experience, and your brand credibility. Users who click on a broken link immediately bounce.

Why Broken Links Harm Your SEO

Broken links affect your SEO in several ways:

• Crawl budget waste: Google crawls your broken links and finds only error pages. That's crawl capacity you could use for actual content
• Loss of link authority: When you link to a non-existent page, that authority flows into nothing. Internal broken links are lost link equity
• Negative user signals: High bounce rate on broken link pages signals to Google that your website is poor
• Crawl inefficiency: Googlebot must re-crawl 404s instead of crawling new important pages
• Brand perception: Users see your website as unprofessional or unmaintained

A SEMrush study found that websites with 10+ broken links had on average 5-10% worse rankings, especially on competitive keywords.

Types of Broken Links in B2B Context

Broken Links in B2B Context

For B2B agencies and content-heavy websites, broken links are especially problematic:

• Frequent restructuring: B2B websites are often reorganized (new service lines, new categories). This creates many broken links
• Old content: Blog posts from 3 years ago can link to tools, products, or companies that no longer exist
• Partner links: B2B websites often link to partner websites that change URLs. These broken links happen outside your control
• Tool integrations: When you use tools for documentation or demos and these change, links can break

A B2B website with 200+ pages can easily have 20-50 broken links without active monitoring.

How to Find Broken Links

Option 1: Automatic tools

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: Crawls your whole website and lists all broken links. Free up to 500 URLs
• Google Search Console: Shows 404 errors under the "Coverage" tab. Shows URLs that users searched from Google that are 404
• Ahrefs: Site audit tool finds all broken links on your site + competitor sites
• Semrush: Site audit shows broken links and recommends fixes
• Google PageSpeed Insights: Sometimes mentions dead links in the detailed report

Option 2: Manual checking

• Install Chrome extension "link checker" and scroll through the browser
• Automatically check all URLs with curl or wget
• Collect user feedback ("This link is broken" reports)

Best Practices for Broken Link Repair

1. Prioritize high-traffic pages - Not all broken links are equally valuable. A broken link on your homepage is more important than on a 10-year-old blog post. Check Google Analytics to see which pages have traffic.

2. Use 301 redirects for moved pages - If you delete a page, redirect to a similar page (e.g., old-product.html > new-product.html). This preserves link authority.

3. Update old content - Instead of tolerating broken links, update old content. A 3-year-old blog post with broken links won't be read by users, but costs crawl budget.

4. Delete or archive irrelevant content - If a page is really no longer relevant (e.g., old product page), delete it or put it on noindex. Don't leave it in the SERPs with broken links.

5. Check external broken links - Monthly check external links you have on other websites. If your page no longer exists, those are broken links for you.

6. Set up automated monitoring - Use tools to scan monthly for broken links. Implement an alert for new broken links

Broken Links Repair - Practical Workflow

Step 1: Run scan - Use Screaming Frog or GSC to identify all broken links. Export as CSV.

Step 2: Categorize - Divide into categories: (a) My error (I deleted the page), (b) external error (link to other website), (c) unclear (maybe should be gone).

Step 3: For my errors: fix or redirect - If there's a similar new page, 301 redirect. Otherwise, use a custom 404 with internal links to similar content.

Step 4: For external errors: update links - If possible, find the new URL and update your link. If the website is gone, remove the link.

Step 5: Monitor and recheck - After 4 weeks, re-crawl and check if your fixes worked.

Broken Links vs. Technical SEO - The Bigger Context

Broken links are part of technical SEO, but not everything. A complete technical SEO audit also checks:

• Crawlability (robots.txt, disallow directives)
• Indexability (noindex tags, meta robots)
• Site speed (page load time)
• Mobile friendliness
• XML sitemaps
• Canonicalization
• SSL/HTTPS

But broken links are one of the easiest technical SEO issues to fix and has direct impact. This is why your broken link fixing should be done regularly.

Prevention: How to Avoid Broken Links

• Document internal links: When you delete or move a page, document all internal links to it and update them
• Redirect policy: Have a policy: "When we delete content, we must 301 redirect". Not just delete
• Link governance: Who can add external links to your content? Have a review process
• Regular audits: Monthly broken link checks should be routine
• Testing before going live: When you restructure content, test all links before the new version goes live

Broken links may seem small, but cumulatively, each dead link costs you SEO ranking, user trust, and crawl efficiency. With regular monitoring and fixing, you can keep this issue completely under control.