A broken link is a link that leads nowhere — a customer clicks it and lands on an error page instead of what they wanted. It is one of the most common problems on business websites, it costs you sales, and it quietly chips away at your SEO (how well you rank on Google). The good news: broken links are easy to find and easy to fix.
What is a broken link?
A link is broken when the page it points to is no longer there. Instead of the product, article or contact form the visitor expected, the browser shows an error — usually a bare page that says "404 — Page not found". The link looked fine, the visitor clicked in good faith, and they hit a dead end.
Broken links come in two flavours. Internal links point from one page on your own site to another page on your site — for example, a "Shop now" button on your homepage pointing to a category page. External links point out to someone else's website — a supplier, a news article, a partner. Both can break, and both matter, but the internal ones are the most damaging because they sit right in the middle of your customer's journey.
How links break in the first place
Most broken links are not anyone's fault — they are just the natural wear and tear of running a website. The usual causes are ordinary:
- A page moved or was deleted. You retire an old product, tidy up your blog, or redesign the site and change the web addresses. Every link that still points to the old address now breaks.
- A small typo. One wrong character in a link — a missing letter, an extra slash — and it goes nowhere. These slip in easily when someone adds a link by hand.
- An external site changed or disappeared. You linked to a supplier's page or a helpful article, and months later they reorganised their site or shut it down. Your link had no way of knowing.
- A file was renamed or removed. A PDF price list, an image, a downloadable brochure — if the file is renamed or deleted, every link and button pointing to it stops working.
Because these things happen slowly and one at a time, broken links tend to build up unnoticed. Nobody sets out to break a link; they just accumulate as the site grows and changes.
Why broken links quietly cost you sales
Put yourself in a customer's shoes. They found your shop, they are interested, they click through to buy — and they hit an error page. Most people do not hunt around for the right page. They assume something is wrong with your business, and they leave. That is a sale you never even knew you lost.
The damage is worst when the broken link sits on the path to a purchase: a product that no longer loads, a "Buy" button that goes nowhere, a checkout step that errors out. But even a broken link in your footer or an old blog post chips away at trust. A site that feels neglected makes people wonder whether their order and their card details are safe with you.
And it is quiet. Unlike a site that is completely down, a handful of broken links throws no alarm. Orders just come in a little slower, and you rarely find out why.
Broken links and SEO: why Google cares
Broken links and SEO are closely linked, because broken links do not only affect visitors — they affect how Google sees your site. Google's job is to send people to helpful, well-kept websites. When its automated crawler follows your links and keeps hitting dead ends, that signals a site that is not being looked after.
There are two practical effects. First, when Google follows an internal link to a page that no longer exists, it cannot show that page in search results — so any product or article you moved without redirecting the old address quietly drops out of Google. Second, a site riddled with dead ends is harder for Google to explore, so newer pages can take longer to appear in search. Neither is a dramatic penalty, but both hold you back from the rankings — and the free traffic — you have earned. Broken links are one of several site-quality issues Google weighs; page speed is another, which we cover in our guide to Core Web Vitals for business owners.
How to find broken links
You cannot fix what you cannot see, and a modern website can have hundreds of links — far too many to click one by one. A few practical approaches:
- Click your own customer journey. At the very least, walk through the paths that make you money — homepage to category to product to checkout — the way a real customer would, and note anything that errors.
- Check Google Search Console. This free tool from Google reports pages it could not reach on your site. It is a good starting point, though it only shows what Google itself has crawled.
- Use a link checker that scans the whole site. A tool that visits every page and tests every link will find dead ends you would never stumble across by hand — including the forgotten ones deep in old pages.
The key is to check regularly, not once. Links break continuously as your site and the wider web change, so a one-off clean-up fixes today's problem but not next month's.
How to fix broken links
Once you know where the dead ends are, fixing them is usually quick — most are a five-minute job for you or your web person:
- If the page still exists at a new address, update the link to point to it — or set up a redirect so the old address automatically forwards to the new one. Redirects are especially important when you move or rename pages, because they carry your Google ranking over to the new address.
- If the page is gone for good, point the link somewhere still useful — a similar product, the right category, or your homepage — so the visitor lands somewhere helpful instead of an error.
- If it was a typo, simply correct the link.
- For external links that died, find an up-to-date replacement or remove the link altogether.
It also helps to have a friendly "404" page — the page shown when something is missing — with a search box and links back to your main sections, so a visitor who does hit a dead end has an easy way back rather than a blank wall.
Where TrustCtrl fits
SiteControl checks your website the way a real visitor sees it — and that includes looking for broken links across your pages, alongside checks for speed, mobile-friendliness, findability in search, accessibility and safety settings. When it finds a dead end, it tells you where it is and what to do about it, in plain language, with a simple view for you and a technical view for your developer. You also get a health trend over time and a PDF report you can share. TrustCtrl watches from the outside and points out what needs attention — there is nothing to install, and it is free during early access. It does not change your site for you; it makes sure the problems do not stay hidden.
Do broken links really hurt SEO?
Yes, though not as a heavy-handed punishment. Broken internal links can drop moved pages out of Google's results and make your site slower for Google to explore, which holds back your rankings and the free traffic that comes with them. Just as importantly, they send visitors to dead ends, which raises the number of people who leave straight away — a sign to Google that your site is not meeting people's needs.
What is a 404 error?
A 404 is the standard message a website shows when a page cannot be found — because it was moved, deleted, or the address was mistyped. "404" is simply the code browsers use for "not found". Seeing one now and then is normal; the problem is when your own links lead to them, because that means customers are being sent to pages that no longer exist.
How often should I check for broken links?
At least once a month for most small businesses, and after any change to your site — a redesign, moving pages, deleting old products, or launching a campaign. Links break continuously as you edit your site and as other websites you link to change, so a regular check keeps the problem from building up unnoticed. Automated monitoring makes this effortless because it checks for you and flags anything new.
Are broken links free to fix?
Finding them can be free — Google Search Console and various link-checking tools cost nothing — and most fixes are quick edits you or your web person can make in minutes. The real cost of broken links is not the repair; it is the sales and search rankings you lose for every week they sit there unnoticed. That is why spotting them early is worth far more than the small effort of fixing them.