A broken link is a link that leads to a page that no longer exists. Instead of the content they expected, your visitor sees a 404 error page — or worse, a blank screen. It's the web equivalent of a store with a "Come Inside!" sign on a locked door.
What causes broken links
Broken links happen for a few common reasons:
- You deleted or renamed a page without updating the links that pointed to it. This is the most common cause on small business sites
- An external site you linked to moved or shut down. You have no control over other people's URLs
- A typo in the URL when creating the link. Even one wrong character makes the link dead
- A site redesign or migration that changed your URL structure without setting up redirects
- An image or file was removed from your media library but still referenced in a page
The tricky part is that broken links accumulate silently. You add and change content over months and years, and links quietly break in the background. Without actively checking, you'd never know.
How broken links hurt your business
Visitors leave
When someone clicks a link and gets a dead end, they don't search for the right page — they leave your site entirely. A study by Ahrefs found that the average website has hundreds of broken links. Each one is a potential customer lost.
Google drops your rankings
Google's crawlers follow every link on your site. When they hit broken links, it signals that your site isn't well-maintained. While a few broken links won't tank your rankings, a pattern of them tells Google your content isn't reliable — and that affects how they rank you for search results.
Your reputation suffers
Broken links look unprofessional. If a potential customer is comparing your business to a competitor, and your site has dead links while theirs doesn't, that's a trust signal — and not in your favor.
Types of broken links
Internal broken links point to pages on your own site that no longer exist. These are entirely within your control and should be fixed first.
External broken links point to other websites that have moved or gone down. You can't fix the other site, but you can update or remove the link on your end.
Broken images reference image files that have been moved or deleted. The page loads, but with broken image placeholders — which looks unprofessional.
Broken anchors link to a specific section of a page (using #) that no longer exists. The page loads but doesn't scroll to the right section.
How to fix broken links
Once you've found your broken links, fixing them is straightforward:
- Update the link to point to the correct URL (if the page moved to a new location)
- Set up a redirect from the old URL to the new one (for pages you renamed or restructured)
- Remove the link entirely if the destination no longer exists and there's no replacement
- Replace with a working alternative if you linked to an external resource that went down
For a detailed walkthrough, see our step-by-step guide to fixing broken links.
Don't let links break silently. Antileak checks every link on your site — internal, external, and images — and tells you exactly which ones are broken. It's part of your website health score. Run a scan and fix the dead ends before your customers find them.
Prevention
The best approach is to catch broken links before your visitors do. Regular monitoring keeps your site clean. When you delete or rename a page, always set up a redirect from the old URL. And when linking to external sites, prefer linking to well-established resources that are unlikely to disappear.
Your health score includes broken links as one of four core categories. Even a handful of broken links can drag your score down — and fixing them is one of the easiest wins available.