Scan your website for broken links, 404 errors, and dead URLs that hurt SEO and user experience. Get detailed reports with actionable insights to fix broken internal and external links and improve your site's link health.
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Enter a website URL above to scan for broken links, 404 errors, and dead URLs. Get detailed reports with actionable insights to improve your site's link health and SEO performance.
Find broken links and 404 errors
Check internal and external links
Identify redirects and chains
Get actionable SEO insights
Scan the website and discover all internal and external links.
Test each link for HTTP status codes and response times.
Identify 404 errors, timeouts, and other broken link issues.
Generate comprehensive reports with fix recommendations.
Broken links significantly damage both SEO and user experience. For SEO, they waste crawl budget as search engines spend time crawling dead URLs, create poor user signals when visitors encounter 404 errors, and can cause link equity to be lost when internal links break. Google considers broken links a sign of poor site maintenance, which can negatively impact rankings. For users, broken links create frustration, increase bounce rates, and damage trust in your website. They interrupt user journeys and can prevent visitors from finding important content or completing desired actions like purchases or sign-ups.
Prioritize fixing broken links in this order: 1. Internal navigation links - These affect site structure and user flow most critically. 2. Links from high-traffic pages - Broken links on popular pages impact more users and SEO value. 3. Links in main navigation or footer - These appear on multiple pages and affect site-wide user experience. 4. Links to important conversion pages - Broken links to product pages, contact forms, or key content directly impact business goals. 5. External links to authoritative sources - These affect content credibility and user trust. 6. Image links and media - While less critical for SEO, they still impact user experience and page completeness.
The frequency of broken link checks depends on your website size and update frequency: Large, frequently updated sites - Weekly or bi-weekly scans to catch issues quickly. Medium-sized business sites - Monthly comprehensive scans with quarterly deep audits. Small websites or blogs - Monthly or quarterly checks, depending on content update frequency. E-commerce sites - Weekly scans due to frequent product and category changes. After major updates - Always scan after site redesigns, migrations, or significant content changes. Seasonal businesses - Before peak seasons when traffic increases. Set up automated monitoring tools to alert you to critical broken links immediately.
Different HTTP status codes indicate different link issues: 404 Not Found - The most common broken link, indicating the page doesn't exist. 403 Forbidden - The page exists but access is denied, often due to permissions. 500 Internal Server Error - Server-side issues preventing page loading. 503 Service Unavailable - Temporary server problems, often during maintenance. 301/302 Redirects - Not broken but may indicate redirect chains that slow loading. Timeout errors - Pages that take too long to respond, effectively broken for users. DNS errors - Domain-level issues preventing connection. Each requires different fixing approaches, from updating URLs to server configuration changes.
Fixing Internal Broken Links: Update the URL to the correct internal page, implement 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones, fix typos in link URLs, restore deleted pages if they had SEO value, or remove links to permanently deleted content. Fixing External Broken Links: Find alternative sources for the same information, update to the current URL if the site moved, remove the link if no alternative exists, replace with archived versions using Wayback Machine, or contact the external site owner about the broken link. Prevention strategies: Use relative URLs for internal links, regularly audit external links, implement link monitoring tools, and maintain a redirect strategy for URL changes.
Automated Monitoring Tools: Set up tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, or online broken link checkers for regular scanning. Content Management Practices: Use relative URLs for internal links, maintain a URL structure strategy, implement proper redirects when changing URLs, and keep a backup of important pages. Development Practices: Test all links before publishing, use staging environments for testing changes, implement automated testing in deployment pipelines, and maintain documentation of URL changes. Regular Maintenance: Schedule monthly link audits, monitor external link health, update outdated external references, and train content creators on proper linking practices.
Broken links significantly impact crawl budget and indexing efficiency. Search engines allocate limited crawl budget to each site, and broken links waste this valuable resource when crawlers attempt to access non-existent pages. This means fewer actual pages get crawled and indexed. Internal broken links can prevent search engines from discovering important pages, creating "orphaned" content that doesn't get indexed. Redirect chains from broken links consume additional crawl budget. 404 errors signal poor site maintenance to search engines. To optimize crawl budget: fix broken internal links immediately, implement proper 301 redirects, remove or update broken external links, use robots.txt to block known broken sections, and monitor crawl errors in Google Search Console regularly.