Broken link checker: find dead links on your page

1. Scan the page to list every link with its status code and anchor text.
2. Triage the results - 404 and 5xx are real breaks; verify 403s manually since they're often bot blocks.
3. Fix internal links first. Correct the path, add a 301 redirect, or remove the link.
4. Repair external links by pointing to a current source or removing dead ones.
5. Re-scan and schedule regular checks of your most important pages.

Internal broken links point to other pages on your own site, so they're entirely your responsibility - and the higher priority. They usually appear after a URL change, a deleted page, or a typo, and they waste crawl budget while sending visitors to dead ends. Fix them by correcting the path or adding a redirect from the old URL. External broken links point to other sites that have since moved or removed the page. You can't control those sites, but a link that 404s still hurts your reader's experience, so update it to a working source or remove it. Both types erode trust; internal ones also directly affect how efficiently search engines crawl and index you.

Links rot continuously - studies of "link rot" find a meaningful share of external links break within a few years as the web changes underneath them. For most sites, audit your highest-traffic and highest-value pages monthly, and run a fuller sweep quarterly or after any migration, redesign, or large content update. The cost of a broken link is invisible until a customer hits it; a small, regular habit of checking and fixing keeps both visitors and crawlers moving through your site instead of bouncing off dead ends.