Why broken links quietly destroy SEO
Every broken link on your site is a small leak. Internal broken links waste crawl budget (Googlebot spends time fetching 404s instead of indexing real pages) and signal poor maintenance. External broken links degrade user experience and can be interpreted as a quality signal against your domain.
This checker fetches every link on a page and tests its HTTP status, classifying results into healthy (2xx), redirects (3xx), broken (4xx and 5xx), and slow (over 2 seconds). For site-wide audits across thousands of pages, the full DarnItSEO Audit crawls everything and reports broken links per source page.
What counts as a broken link
4xx status codes (404 Not Found, 410 Gone, 403 Forbidden) and 5xx status codes (500 Internal Server Error, 502 Bad Gateway, 503 Service Unavailable) are unambiguously broken. Network errors (DNS failures, connection refused, timeouts) also count as broken from the user's perspective.
Redirects (3xx) are not broken but introduce latency and chain risks. A 301 to a still-live destination is fine. A 301 to another 301 to another 301 (a redirect chain) wastes crawl budget and degrades performance. Use the Redirect Chain Checker for deeper redirect analysis.
The most damaging broken-link scenarios
Internal links to pages you have deleted but forgotten to update. Common after content migrations, URL slug changes, or consolidating pages. Find with this tool and either fix the link or 301-redirect the deleted URL.
Outbound links to third-party domains that have gone offline or changed structure. Less under your control but still worth fixing because user-facing 404s damage trust. Replace with archived versions (web.archive.org) or different sources.
Image src links that fail. Missing images render as broken icons and inflate Largest Contentful Paint when the image was supposed to be the LCP element. Fix immediately.
How often to audit broken links
Monthly for active content sites. Quarterly minimum for static sites. After every major content migration or theme change. The DarnItSEO Audit can be scheduled to run weekly with email alerts on newly detected broken links.
Pages with high inbound links and high traffic deserve more frequent checks because broken links there compound the cost. Pages buried at depth 5+ matter less.
Fixing strategies
For internal broken links, two options. If the destination page exists at a new URL, update the link or 301 redirect the old URL to the new one. If the destination is permanently gone, either remove the link or redirect to the most relevant live page. Avoid sending all 404s to the homepage; that creates soft 404s and wastes link equity.
For external broken links, replace with a working source if possible. If the original source is permanently gone, link to the Internet Archive's saved copy. As a last resort, remove the link and rephrase the surrounding text so it still flows.