How do I find broken links on my website?

Short answer: broken links come from deleted or renamed pages and typos in menus and content. They frustrate visitors and waste search engines' visits. Checking the links on your main pages and every page in your sitemap catches most of them.

How to check it yourself

Click through your menu, footer and main pages in a private window.
Open your sitemap and check each page loads (200), not 404 or a redirect.
In Google Search Console, open Pages and look for "Not found (404)".
Fix the link, or redirect the old address to the right new page.

Why it matters

Broken links send visitors to error pages, which makes a site look neglected and loses the people who clicked. Search engines also follow links to find and value your pages, so broken links waste crawl time and break the path to pages that matter.

Common causes

A page was deleted or its address changed without a redirect.
Links point at another website that moved or closed.
Links were copied from a staging site with the wrong domain.
A typo in a link that was never clicked after publishing.

What Preventionlabs shows

Every report finds broken internal links on your homepage, insecure http:// resources on https pages, and loads up to 50 pages from your sitemap, reporting the ones that fail or redirect.

Links are followed from the homepage. Deep pages not in your sitemap need the Search Console check above.

Price

First report free, no card needed. Then A$50 a month, up to 10 domains.

Run your first report free