How to Find and Fix Broken Links (to Reclaim Valuable “Link Juice”)

In this article, you’ll learn how to find broken links on your website, fix them, and reclaim the link equity you’re losing right now. You’ll also learn how to find and repair broken backlinks pointing to your site from other domains—and why this matters for both traditional search rankings and your visibility in AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Note: This article is about finding and fixing your own broken links and backlinks. It is not about “broken link building”—a separate outreach strategy where you find competitors’ broken backlinks and pitch your content as a replacement. If you want to learn about that, check out our guide to link building tools.

Why Broken Links Matter More Than You Think

Before diving into the how-to, it helps to understand why broken links deserve your attention at all.

Most teams know that 404 errors create a bad user experience. A visitor clicks a link expecting useful information and instead gets a dead end. That alone is reason enough to fix them.

But there are deeper consequences.

They waste link equity (PageRank). Every link on your website passes some amount of authority to the page it points to. When that link points to a dead page, the equity goes nowhere. It is not redistributed to other pages—it simply vanishes. Over time, as more links break, the authority your site has earned through years of content and outreach slowly leaks away.

They hurt crawl efficiency. Search engine crawlers have a finite budget for how many pages they will crawl on your site during a given session. Every time Googlebot hits a 404, that is one fewer page it could have crawled and indexed. For large sites with thousands of pages, this adds up.

They signal neglect. Google has confirmed that 404 errors alone do not directly hurt rankings. But a site riddled with broken links tells search engines—and users—that no one is maintaining the content. Over time, this can erode trust.

They weaken your AI search presence. This is the part most guides miss. AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini crawl the web and index content to generate their answers. When their crawlers encounter broken links on your site, it signals the same neglect that Google interprets. More importantly, if the pages that break are the very pages these models cite as sources, you lose those citations entirely. A broken page cannot be cited. And lost citations in AI search mean lost visibility in an emerging organic channel that is growing every month.

In short: broken links are not just a technical SEO problem. They are a visibility problem across every channel your content shows up in.

Part 1: How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website

Broken links on your site are outgoing links—both internal and external—that point to pages that no longer exist.

A broken internal link goes from one page on your domain to another page on your domain that returns a 404 error. For example, your blog post links to /pricing-guide/, but you deleted that page six months ago and never redirected it.

A broken external link goes from a page on your domain to a page on another domain that no longer exists. For example, your resource page links to a research study on an external site, but that site has since removed the study.

There are only two ways broken links end up on your site. Either the page you linked to was deleted or moved by the other site (this is called “link rot”), or someone on your team linked to the wrong URL by mistake.

Both are easy to fix once you find them.

Step 1: Find All Broken Links on Your Site

There are several ways to find broken links. The best method depends on the size of your site.

Option A: Use a Free Broken Link Checker (Best for Quick Audits)

If you want a fast check without installing anything, use Analyze AI’s free Broken Link Checker. Enter your domain, and it will crawl your site and return a list of all broken outgoing links—both internal and external.

This is the fastest way to get a snapshot. For a small site with fewer than 500 pages, this is usually all you need.

Option B: Use Google Search Console (Free, But Limited)

Google Search Console reports crawl errors in its Pages report under Indexing. Go to Indexing > Pages and look for pages listed under the “Not found (404)” reason.

The limitation here is that Search Console only shows pages that Googlebot has tried to crawl and found missing. It does not show you which pages on your site link to those broken URLs. You know what is broken, but not where the broken links live. That means extra manual work to locate and fix them.

Option C: Use a Crawling Tool (Best for Large Sites)

For sites with thousands of pages, a dedicated crawling tool is the most thorough approach. Tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Sitebulb will crawl your entire site, follow every link, and report which ones return 4XX or 5XX status codes.

Here is how to do it with Screaming Frog:

1. Open Screaming Frog and enter your domain URL.

2. Click Start to begin the crawl.

3. Once the crawl completes, click on the Response Codes tab.

4. Use the filter dropdown to select Client Error (4XX).

5. You will now see every URL on your site that returns a 4XX error.

6. Click on any URL, then look at the Inlinks tab at the bottom of the screen to see which pages on your site link to the broken URL.

This gives you a complete map: the broken destination, the HTTP status code, and the page that contains the broken link. That is everything you need to fix the issue.

Pro tip: Export the results as a CSV. This becomes your broken link audit spreadsheet. Add columns for “Fix Type” (replace, remove, or redirect) and “Status” (fixed, pending) so you can track your progress.

Option D: Use a WordPress Plugin (WordPress Sites Only)

If your site runs on WordPress, install the Broken Link Checker plugin. It runs in the background, checks all your links on a schedule, and alerts you in your WordPress dashboard when it finds a broken one.

The advantage is automation—you do not need to remember to run manual audits. The disadvantage is performance. On large sites, the plugin can slow down your server because it constantly queries your database. For sites with more than a few hundred posts, a crawling tool or free audit tool is a better choice.

Step 2: Fix All Broken Links on Your Site

Once you have a list of broken links, fixing them is straightforward. There are three possible actions for each one.

Replace the broken link with a working link. This is the ideal fix. Find an updated URL for the same resource, or find a similar resource that serves the same purpose. If you are not sure what the dead page used to contain, paste the broken URL into the Wayback Machine to see an archived version. That will tell you what the page was about so you can find a suitable replacement.

Remove the link entirely. If the linked resource is no longer relevant or you cannot find a suitable replacement, just delete the link. Keep the surrounding text if it still makes sense without the hyperlink.

Redirect the broken internal URL (for internal links only). If the broken link is an internal link to a page you deleted or moved, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new or most relevant URL on your site. This fixes the broken link and also preserves any external backlinks that other sites may have pointed to that old URL.

Prioritize by page authority. Not all broken links are equally important. Fix the ones on your highest-traffic pages first, then work through the rest. If your site has hundreds of broken links, this is a task you can hand off to a virtual assistant with a clear spreadsheet and instructions.

How Broken Internal Links Affect AI Search Visibility

Here is where most broken link guides stop. They fix the links, run the next audit, and move on. But if you are tracking how your site appears in AI search engines, broken internal links have a second-order effect worth understanding.

AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity crawl your site much the same way Google does—they follow links from one page to the next. When they hit a 404 during a crawl, they stop following that path. That means any content behind the broken link becomes harder for the AI model to discover, index, and ultimately cite.

If the broken link sits on a high-authority page—say, your homepage or a popular blog post—and it was pointing to a detailed product page or resource, that resource may effectively become invisible to AI engines.

You can check this by using Analyze AI’s Sources report. This shows every URL and webpage that AI platforms cite when answering questions in your industry. If you notice that a particular page that should be getting cited is not appearing in the Sources data, check whether any internal links to that page are broken. A dead link path is often the culprit.

The fix is the same as above—repair the broken link—but the diagnostic step of checking AI citation data adds a layer of insight that most teams miss. You are not just fixing links for Google anymore. You are ensuring that the crawl paths AI engines follow actually lead to your best content.

Part 2: How to Find and Fix Broken Backlinks to Your Website

Broken backlinks are a completely different problem. These are links that other websites point to your site, but the destination page on your site no longer exists.

Here is an example. A popular industry blog wrote about your product three years ago and linked to yoursite.com/features/analytics-dashboard/. Since then, your team restructured the site and the page now lives at yoursite.com/product/analytics/. The old URL returns a 404. The link from the industry blog is now broken.

The result: all the link equity that backlink was passing to your site is wasted. It hits the 404 and goes nowhere.

There are two common reasons broken backlinks happen. Either you deleted or moved a page that had external backlinks pointing to it, or the linking website made a typo in the URL when they originally linked to you.

Both are fixable.

Step 1: Find All Broken Backlinks to Your Site

To find broken backlinks, you need a backlink analysis tool that can identify which of your pages return a 404 while still having external links pointing to them.

Option A: Use a Free Broken Link Checker

Analyze AI’s Broken Link Checker can scan your domain to identify pages that return 404 errors while still receiving inbound links.

Option B: Use a Backlink Analysis Tool

Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz have dedicated reports for this. The general process across all of them is similar.

Here is the workflow using a backlink analysis tool:

1. Enter your domain in the tool.

2. Navigate to the report that shows your top pages sorted by backlinks or referring domains.

3. Filter for pages that return a 404 HTTP status code.

4. Sort by referring domains (highest to lowest).

This gives you a prioritized list. The pages at the top of the list are the ones where you are losing the most link equity. Focus on fixing those first.

For example, you might find that a deleted blog post still has 40 referring domains. That is 40 websites passing link equity to a dead page. Fixing that one URL could have a measurable impact on your rankings.

Option B.1: The Broken Backlinks Report

Most backlink tools also have a dedicated “Broken Backlinks” report that shows every individual broken backlink rather than grouping by page. This view is useful if you want to prioritize by the authority of the linking page rather than the number of linking domains.

For most sites, the “Best by Links” approach (Option B) is more practical because it lets you fix problems by page rather than by individual link. One redirect fixes every broken backlink pointing to that page.

Step 2: Fix All Broken Backlinks to Your Site

Unlike broken links on your site, you cannot directly edit or remove broken backlinks. Those links live on other people’s websites. But you have several strategies to reclaim the lost equity.

Here are five fixes, listed in order of preference. Start with option 1 and move down the list.

1. Reach out and request a correction. If the linking site made a typo in your URL, send a polite email letting them know. Include the broken link, the correct URL, and a brief note explaining the issue. Most webmasters will fix it—especially if the correction benefits their own readers.

Here is an example email:

Subject: Quick fix for a broken link on [their page title]

Hi [Name],

I noticed that your post [title] links to our site at [broken URL], but the correct URL is [correct URL]. The current link leads to a 404 error. Would you mind updating it? It would help your readers reach the right page.

Thanks, [Your name]

2. Redirect the broken URL to the correct page (301 redirect). If you moved or renamed the page, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This immediately fixes every broken backlink that points to the old URL without requiring any action from the linking sites.

A 301 redirect passes nearly all of the link equity to the new URL. Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that 301 redirects no longer lose PageRank.

This is the most common fix and usually the fastest.

3. Recreate the content at the original URL. If the page was deleted and you want the content to exist again, put it back. Create new (or restored) content at the exact URL that the backlinks point to. The link equity starts flowing again immediately.

4. Redirect to the most relevant existing page. If you cannot or do not want to recreate the deleted page, find the closest match on your current site and redirect the broken URL to that page.

Two rules here. First, the redirect target must be genuinely relevant. Redirecting a deleted blog post about “email marketing best practices” to your homepage is a bad idea—it confuses users and Google may treat it as a soft 404 anyway. Second, check the anchor text of the backlinks before you redirect. The anchor text of the incoming links should make sense in context with the redirect destination.

5. Leave the 404 in place. Sometimes none of the above options make sense. If the deleted page is not relevant to anything on your current site and the backlinks are low quality, it is fine to leave the 404. Just make sure your 404 page is a proper “hard” 404 (returns a 404 HTTP status code) and not a “soft” 404 (returns a 200 status code while displaying a “not found” message). Soft 404s confuse search engines and waste crawl budget.

How to Prioritize Broken Backlinks

If you have dozens or hundreds of broken backlinks, do not try to fix them all at once. Prioritize by the amount of link equity at stake.

Sort your list by number of referring domains, then by the authority of the linking pages. A broken backlink from a high-authority site like a major publication or government page is worth far more than one from a low-traffic blog.

Focus on the top 20% first. Those will account for the majority of the lost equity.

How Broken Backlinks Affect Your AI Search Visibility

This is the section you will not find in most broken link guides, and it is important.

AI search engines rely heavily on citations. When ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini generate an answer, they often link to the sources they used. These sources are typically the same pages that rank well in traditional search—pages with strong backlink profiles, high topical authority, and well-structured content.

When those pages break, two things happen. First, the link equity that supported the page’s traditional search rankings dissipates, which means the page (if it still existed) would rank lower. Second, and more directly, the AI engines that were citing that page lose access to it. The next time their crawlers try to verify the source, they get a 404. Over time, the AI model stops citing it.

This is measurable. Inside Analyze AI, you can use the AI Traffic Analytics report to see exactly which pages on your site receive traffic from AI search engines. If a page that was previously getting AI-referred traffic suddenly drops to zero, check whether that page is returning a 404 or whether it lost key backlinks that supported its authority.

You can drill even deeper with the Landing Pages report, which shows exactly which pages AI engines are sending traffic to. If a page disappears from this report, that is a signal something broke—either the page itself or the backlinks supporting it.

The fix is the same—redirect broken URLs, restore deleted pages, or reclaim lost backlinks. But the reason to prioritize this work expands beyond Google rankings. You are protecting your presence in a channel that more and more of your audience is using to discover and evaluate products.

How to Prevent Broken Links from Happening in the First Place

Fixing broken links is necessary. Preventing them is better.

Here are the practices that keep your site clean over time.

Run a crawl audit monthly. Schedule a monthly crawl of your site using Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Analyze AI’s Broken Link Checker. Catch new broken links before they accumulate and affect rankings.

Never delete a page without checking its backlinks first. Before removing any page from your site, check whether it has external backlinks. If it does, set up a 301 redirect to the most relevant replacement before deleting. This takes 30 seconds and can save you hours of link reclamation work later.

Use a URL structure that does not need to change. Avoid putting dates, categories, or other volatile elements in your URLs. A URL like /blog/2024/03/seo-tips/ will feel outdated in a year. A URL like /blog/seo-tips/ is evergreen and unlikely to need restructuring.

Track external link targets. If your content links heavily to third-party resources (research papers, statistics pages, tool documentation), those resources can disappear at any time. Run a quarterly check on your external links to catch link rot early.

Set up monitoring for your AI citations. This is a step most teams skip because they do not yet track AI search as a channel. But if your pages are being cited by AI engines and one of those pages breaks, you lose that citation—potentially for months before you notice.

Inside Analyze AI, the Sources report shows every URL that AI platforms cite when answering questions about your industry. You can filter by your own domain to see which of your pages are being cited most frequently. Set up weekly monitoring to catch any drops.

If you notice a page drop off the citations list, check three things: is the page still live? Are its backlinks intact? Has the content gone stale? Broken links are one of the most common culprits behind sudden citation drops, but not the only one.

How to Monitor Your Link Health Alongside AI Visibility

Traditional SEO audits focus on crawl errors, redirect chains, and 4XX status codes. Those remain important. But if you want a complete picture of how your site’s link health affects your overall discoverability—including in AI search—you need to layer in a few additional checks.

Check your AI traffic trends. Use Analyze AI’s AI Traffic Analytics to see whether traffic from AI sources is growing, flat, or declining. A sudden decline that coincides with a batch of broken pages or lost backlinks is a strong signal that link health is affecting your AI visibility.

Monitor your competitor’s citation gains. Sometimes your link equity loss is your competitor’s citation gain. Analyze AI’s Competitors dashboard shows which brands are appearing in AI-generated answers alongside yours. If a competitor is gaining ground while you are losing it, check whether your site has technical issues (like broken links) that are undermining your authority.

Use weekly email reports to catch issues early. Analyze AI sends weekly email summaries that flag changes in your AI visibility, citation counts, and competitive positioning. If a broken page causes a citation to drop, the weekly report will surface it before you would catch it in a manual audit.

The goal is not to turn link maintenance into a full-time job. It is to build a lightweight system—monthly crawl audits, quarterly external link checks, weekly AI visibility monitoring—that catches problems before they compound.

Common Mistakes When Fixing Broken Links

Even experienced teams make these mistakes. Here is what to avoid.

Redirecting everything to the homepage. This is the most common lazy fix. When a page breaks, someone sets up a redirect to the homepage and calls it done. Google may treat mass homepage redirects as soft 404s, which means you get no benefit from the redirect. Worse, users who follow a specific link and land on a generic homepage have a terrible experience.

Ignoring redirect chains. A redirect chain happens when Page A redirects to Page B, which redirects to Page C, and so on. Each hop in the chain can lose a small amount of link equity, and long chains can slow down page load times. When fixing broken links, always redirect to the final destination URL directly, not to another redirect.

Fixing only internal links and ignoring backlinks. Internal broken links are easier to find and fix, so teams often stop there. But broken backlinks are where the real link equity loss happens, because those are links you earned from external sites. Ignoring them is leaving authority on the table.

Using soft 404s instead of hard 404s. A soft 404 is when your server returns a 200 (OK) status code even though the page displays a “not found” message. Search engines cannot reliably detect that the page is actually missing, so they may continue to crawl and attempt to index it. Always return a proper 404 or 410 HTTP status code for pages that no longer exist.

Never checking what the broken page used to be. Before you redirect a broken URL, take 60 seconds to check what the page contained. Use the Wayback Machine or review the anchor text of backlinks pointing to it. Redirecting blindly to a vaguely related page can dilute the topical relevance of the link equity.

Final Thoughts

Broken links and broken backlinks waste the link equity you have spent months or years building. They hurt your user experience, your crawl efficiency, and increasingly, your visibility in AI search engines that cite your content as a source.

The fix is not complicated. Run a crawl audit to find broken links on your site. Use a backlink analysis tool to find broken backlinks. Then work through the list—replace, redirect, or remove—starting with the pages that carry the most authority.

The key is making this a recurring process, not a one-time project. Links break over time. Pages get moved. External sites delete resources. If you audit your links quarterly and monitor your AI citations weekly, you will catch problems before they compound.

If you want to see how your site’s link health is affecting your AI search visibility, try Analyze AI’s free Broken Link Checker to start finding issues today. And if you want to track how AI engines are citing your content over time, check out Analyze AI’s platform to connect the dots between your SEO fundamentals and your AI search performance.

Because SEO is not dead. It is evolving. And the sites that maintain clean technical foundations—including healthy link profiles—will be the ones that show up in both traditional search results and AI-generated answers.