Why are broken links bad for SEO?

Broken links create a poor user experience and waste Google's crawl budget. When Google encounters dead links on your site, it signals that the site is poorly maintained, which can negatively affect your rankings. Fixing broken links is one of the quickest SEO wins for any website.

How often should I check for broken links?

Check at least once a month. Links break for many reasons — pages get deleted, URLs change, external sites go offline. Regular checks prevent dead links from building up and damaging your rankings over time.

How do I fix broken links on my website?

For internal broken links, either update the link to point to the correct page or set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. For external broken links, either remove the link or replace it with an alternative working source. Our free tool identifies all broken links so you know exactly what needs fixing.

Broken Link Checker Tool – Free Scan for Small Business SEO

Broken Link Checker Tool scanning a website for dead links

The Broken Link Checker Tool instantly scans your site for dead links that frustrate visitors, reduce trust, and weaken search rankings. Recent studies show that up to 74.5% of links decay over time, meaning your site could already be losing valuable traffic. For companies investing in SEO for small business or local SEO in the UK, this free check is a quick way to keep your website healthy, professional, and competitive.

Free Broken Link Checker

What Broken Links Cost Your Business

Dead links don't just annoy visitors — they actively damage your SEO and your bottom line:

Wasted link equity — Every broken internal link is a dead end for the authority flowing through your site. That's ranking power you've earned but aren't using.
Poor user experience — Visitors who hit a 404 page leave. If they came from Google, that bounce signals to search engines that your site isn't delivering.
Crawl budget waste — Google has a limited budget for crawling your site. Every broken link it follows is a page it could have indexed instead.
Lost trust — A site full of dead links looks neglected. For service businesses, that's a direct hit to credibility.

Read the full breakdown in our guide: Why Dead Links Are Bad for SEO.

Keep Your Website Strong with Our Broken Link Checker Tool

Broken links are more common — and more damaging — than most site owners realise. Recent studies paint a clear picture of just how widespread the issue has become:

🔍 Recent Broken Link Statistics

Ahrefs (2024): 66.5% of links rotted over 9 years; ~74.5% "lost or problematic" when errors included.
Pew Research (2024): 23% of news webpages and 21% of government pages contain at least one broken link.
Wikipedia: 54% of reference pages contain at least one broken citation link.
arXiv (2024): 35.2% of high-traffic homepages have at least one broken external link.
Square Eye (2025): 87% of top law firm websites had broken links, averaging ~225 per site.

Key takeaway: whether it's a blog, business site, or government portal — broken links are everywhere, and they harm credibility, rankings, and user trust.

Routine scans with our Broken Link Checker Tool stop small issues from becoming major SEO problems. Combine it with our SEO services for small businesses, blog writing services, and website copywriting to keep your site visible, relevant, and trusted by search engines.

This tool scans for broken links, but your site may have deeper issues holding it back. Our free 50-point SEO audit checks everything — technical problems, content gaps, competitor comparison, and a prioritised action plan. Reviewed by a human, not just automated tools.

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