How to Check Website for Broken Links

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Why Broken Links Are Silently Sabotaging Your Success

It's a tough pill to swallow, but your website probably has broken links right now. More than just a minor hiccup, these dead ends are actively chipping away at your hard work. Imagine you’ve built a fantastic store, but some aisles lead to brick walls. Every time a visitor hits a "404 Not Found" error, it’s a frustrating dead end that can damage their trust and send them packing.

The True Cost of a 404 Error

A broken link isn't just a technical glitch; it's a red flag for search engines, signaling that your site might not be well-maintained. Over time, this can cause your search rankings to drop. From a business angle, each broken link is a lost opportunity—a potential sale that never happens, a reader who doesn’t subscribe, or a client who second-guesses your professionalism.

This problem, known as link rot, is more common than you might realize. A detailed study on link rot found that a whopping 74.5% of backlinks pointing to websites are either gone or no longer work, making them useless from an SEO standpoint.

Shifting Your Perspective on Maintenance

The most successful website owners treat link maintenance just as seriously as they treat data backups. They know that a clean link profile is essential for both the people visiting their site and for search engine visibility. Instead of seeing it as a tedious task, they view the process to check a website for broken links as a vital, proactive strategy to protect their online presence.

It’s all part of a solid link management system that ensures every pathway on their site is open and working correctly. This simple change in mindset—from reactive fixing to proactive care—is often what separates a thriving website from one that slowly loses its audience due to neglect.

Free Tools That Actually Deliver Results

When you need to check a website for broken links without opening your wallet, the best place to start is often with the tools you already use. Many people dismiss free resources, assuming they can't possibly match up to paid alternatives. But with the right strategy, you can build a surprisingly effective system for hunting down those annoying 404s.

Your Starting Point: Google Search Console

Before you even consider downloading new software, the first place to look is your Google Search Console (GSC) account. It’s the most direct way to see your site’s health from Google's perspective. It's totally free and provides a goldmine of information straight from the source. Your main target here is the "Pages" report, specifically under the "Not indexed" tab.

Here's a snapshot of the report where you can find these errors.

By filtering for "Not found (404)," GSC hands you a list of URLs its crawlers tried to access but couldn't. This isn't just any list of broken links; it’s a list of broken links that Google already knows about, which automatically makes them your highest priority to fix.

Browser Extensions for On-the-Fly Checks

While GSC gives you a fantastic high-level view, browser extensions are perfect for quick, page-specific audits. A tool like Broken Link Checker for Chrome can scan an entire webpage in just a few seconds, conveniently highlighting any broken links in red. This is incredibly handy when you're updating an older blog post and want to quickly ensure all your outbound links are still live.

The infographic below illustrates this idea perfectly: using the right tools magnifies broken pathways on your website, making them impossible to miss.

The key takeaway is that you need a focused method to spot issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. These tools act as your magnifying glass, bringing critical errors to the forefront. A broken link doesn't just disrupt navigation; it can shatter the user's journey. If you're using specialized links for marketing campaigns, you might want to read our pro-level guide on creating deep links to keep those journeys seamless. By combining GSC for site-wide monitoring with a browser extension for on-the-spot checks, you get solid coverage without spending a penny.

Smart Manual Checking That Saves Your Sanity

While automated tools are fantastic for sweeping your entire site, sometimes a well-aimed manual check is quicker and gives you more useful feedback. When you check a website for broken links by hand, you’re not just hunting for 404 errors. You're stepping into your visitors' shoes, and that often shines a light on problems a scanner would completely miss.

Instead of clicking every single link on your website (which sounds like a recipe for burnout), a more focused approach works wonders. Start with your most important pages—not just the homepage, but also your top-performing blog posts, main product pages, and any page that’s critical to your sales process.

Prioritize and Conquer

A simple spreadsheet is your best friend here. List your top 10-15 pages and go through every internal and external link on each one. This targeted effort ensures your most valuable content delivers a smooth, frustration-free experience. A couple of browser shortcuts can speed things up:

Ctrl + Click (or Cmd + Click on Mac): This opens links in new tabs, letting you quickly open all links on a page and then check them in a batch.

Right-Click and "Copy Link Address": This allows you to paste links into a document to keep track of what you've already checked.

This hands-on process might feel a bit old-school, but it offers a level of quality control that automation can't replicate. It’s also a surprisingly common problem, even for the big players. Research found that about 25% of pages on high-traffic news sites have at least one broken link—a rate almost identical to smaller sites. This really shows that no matter how big your website is, regular checks are essential. You can dig into the full report on how content disappears online.

Of course, manual checks have their limits. Once your site grows beyond 50-100 pages, this method becomes much less practical. If you find yourself spending hours clicking through links, that’s a clear signal it’s time to bring in more powerful, automated tools.

Professional-Grade Automation for Serious Websites

When you're starting out, a free tool or a quick manual check for broken links might do the trick. But as your website grows, that approach quickly becomes unmanageable. For large e-commerce stores, sprawling content sites, or agencies juggling multiple clients, you need to check a website for broken links automatically and consistently. This is where professional-grade tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Screaming Frog become less of a luxury and more of a necessity for protecting your site’s health and revenue.

Diving Deep with Comprehensive Site Audits

The biggest difference with these advanced platforms is that they don't just spit out a list of 404 errors. They perform a comprehensive site audit, crawling your entire website to understand the bigger picture. They map out your internal link structure, uncover long redirect chains, and find orphaned pages that have no internal links pointing to them.

This context is everything. A broken link is often just a symptom of a deeper structural problem. For instance, a site audit might reveal that 20 broken links all originate from an outdated link in your website's footer. Instead of fixing 20 individual pages, you fix the root cause in one go.

You can see this in action on a typical site health dashboard, like this one from Ahrefs' Site Audit tool. It gives you a bird's-eye view of all the issues it has found.

The dashboard immediately shows you what needs your attention, categorizing issues by severity. The "Health Score" provides a quick snapshot, so you know exactly where your site stands at a glance.

Setting Up Proactive Monitoring Systems

The true advantage of these tools is scheduled, automated monitoring. You can configure them to crawl your website on a regular basis—daily, weekly, or monthly—and get an alert the moment a new broken link pops up. This proactive approach means you’re often finding and fixing issues before they ever affect a visitor or get flagged by search engines.

When looking at different professional solutions, there are a few key features that can make a big difference:

Customizable Crawl Settings: You'll want control over crawl speed (to avoid overloading your server), how deep the crawl goes, and which sections of your site to include or exclude.

Detailed Reporting: The best reports don't just show the broken URL. They show you the source page where the broken link is located, making it much faster to find and fix.

Integration Capabilities: The ability to connect with other tools in your stack, like Google Analytics or project management software, can really simplify your workflow.

For sites where downtime and poor user experience directly translate to lost revenue, a small army of dedicated tools is essential. For a closer look at what's available for larger operations, here’s a comparison of some top-tier solutions.

Enterprise Link Monitoring Solutions

For large-scale websites and agencies, standard tools might not be enough. Here’s a comparison of advanced link checking tools designed for the big leagues.

Solution	Pricing	Monitoring Frequency	Reporting Features	Integration Options
Siteimprove	Custom quote	Daily, weekly, monthly	Interactive dashboards, historical data, accessibility reports	CMS, BI tools, Analytics
ContentKing	Starts at $49/mo	Real-time	Live change-logs, alerts, SEO auditing	Google Analytics, Slack, GSC
Lumar (formerly Deepcrawl)	Custom quote	On-demand, scheduled	Trend analysis, technical SEO, custom reports	Adobe Analytics, BI tools, GSC
Botify	Custom quote	On-demand, scheduled	Log file analysis, segmentation, keyword tracking	Google Analytics, BigQuery, GSC

These enterprise-level platforms offer much more than just link checking; they provide a full suite of website health and SEO analytics.

Ultimately, investing in a premium tool makes sense when the cost of missed opportunities—whether it's lost sales, a tarnished reputation, or a dip in search rankings—is greater than the subscription fee. For any serious online business, this level of automated oversight is a core part of modern website management.

Building a Maintenance Schedule That Actually Works

Having the right tools is one thing, but they don't do much good without a consistent plan. To really get ahead of link rot, you need to create a maintenance schedule that fits into your actual workflow, not some perfect, imaginary one. The idea isn't to be constantly checking your website for broken links but to make it a natural part of your routine.

How Often Should You Check?

The best schedule really comes down to how active your site is. A simple portfolio website that rarely changes might only need a check-up every quarter. On the other hand, a busy e-commerce store or a blog that posts new content daily should probably be scanned more frequently, maybe even weekly.

Think of your most important pages—like top-level product categories or your cornerstone blog posts—as high-priority items that deserve more regular attention. It's like taking care of plants; some need a little water every day, while others are fine with a weekly sprinkle. This proactive mindset is a core part of tracking your site's health, which is essential for measuring your overall marketing success.

Creating a Sustainable Routine

The secret to consistency is to tie link-checking to tasks you're already doing. For example, get into the habit of running a quick scan every time you publish a new article or update a major page on your site. If you use WordPress, this can be just one small item on a larger maintenance checklist. To really keep your site in top shape, it's a good idea to develop a comprehensive WordPress website maintenance plan that makes regular broken link checks a standard procedure.

This ongoing effort is important because link decay is an ever-present issue. It's estimated that over 10% of all links across the web are broken, with many links starting to break down within about two years. While this poses a significant SEO challenge, it also creates an opportunity for those who are diligent. You can discover more insights about these link building statistics and see for yourself why a steady, consistent approach is your best defense against link rot.

Fixing Broken Links Without Breaking Your SEO

Finding a broken link is only half the battle. The real trick when you check a website for broken links is to fix them without creating new SEO headaches. Just deleting a broken link or the page it points to can actually do more harm than good, especially if that page has valuable backlinks. The goal is to gently guide both your visitors and search engines to the right content, preserving your site's hard-earned authority.

Imagine you find a broken link in a blog post that used to point to a product you no longer sell. Your first instinct might be to just remove the link, but that creates a dead end for the user. A much better approach is to redirect that old, broken URL to a relevant category page. This keeps the user journey flowing smoothly and helps pass along any "link equity" the original page might have accumulated.

Your Three Core Options: Fix, Redirect, or Remove

After your link checker hands you a list of broken URLs, you have three main ways to handle each one. The right choice really depends on the specific situation.

Fix it: This is the simplest solution and often the case for internal links. If a link is just misspelled (like my-artcle.html instead of my-article.html), all you need to do is correct the URL in your content management system.

Redirect it: When a page's content has been merged into another or moved permanently, a 301 redirect is your best tool. This signals to search engines that the page has a new, permanent home, and most of its SEO value should be transferred over. If you're new to this, we have a helpful guide explaining the difference between 301 and 302 redirects and their SEO implications.

Remove it: Think of this as your last resort. You should only remove a link entirely if it points to an external site that's completely irrelevant, low-quality, or adds zero value to your readers.

Many people using WordPress turn to plugins to manage these fixes. For example, the popular Broken Link Checker plugin provides a straightforward interface to handle these issues.

As you can see, you can edit the URL or unlink it directly from your dashboard, which makes the repair process much faster. Finding and fixing issues like broken links is a key part of maintaining a healthy website. Understanding the various SEO audit benefits can give you a bigger picture of how all these small fixes contribute to your site's overall performance.

Key Takeaways

After exploring how to check a website for broken links, let's pull everything together into a sensible plan. The real goal isn't just to hunt down errors; it's about creating a sustainable process that keeps your site running smoothly without becoming a major headache. Think of link maintenance less as a chore and more as a vital part of protecting your brand’s credibility and SEO efforts.

Your Link Maintenance Checklist

A smart strategy is all about mixing automated tools with a bit of manual common sense. Here’s a practical approach you can put into action right away:

Monthly Site-Wide Scan: At least once a month, run a deep crawl using a comprehensive tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. This is perfect for catching bigger problems, like internal links that broke after a site redesign.

Weekly High-Priority Check: Pinpoint your top 10-15 pages—these are your money-makers, like key blog posts, service pages, or popular product listings. Use a quick browser extension to scan these weekly. This ensures your most important content is always in perfect shape.

On-Publication Check: Make it a habit to do one last scan of all links right before you publish any new piece of content. This simple step stops new broken links from ever making it onto your live site.

Quarterly 404 Review: Pop into Google Search Console once a quarter and check the "Not found (404)" report. This report shows you which broken links Google has already found, highlighting them as an immediate priority for you to fix.

Realistic Benchmarks for Success

Trying to maintain zero broken links is a recipe for frustration. The internet is always in flux, and links on other websites will inevitably break. A much more achievable goal is to keep your broken links to fewer than 1% of your site's total links at any given time. Real success isn't about perfection; it’s about having a system to find and fix problems within 48-72 hours. This approach minimizes any negative impact on your visitors and search engine rankings.

Ready to automate and simplify your entire link management process? AliasLinks offers robust tools to cloak, manage, and track your links, ensuring your marketing campaigns run without a hitch. Start your 7-day free trial today and see the difference for yourself.

How to Check Website for Broken Links | Quick & Easy Tips