How to Find Broken Backlinks (and Win Back the Link Value)

Somewhere out there, a website is linking to a page on your site that no longer exists. Maybe you renamed it in a redesign, deleted an old product, or changed your URL structure. The other site never got the memo, so every visitor who clicks that link lands on your 404 page, and the link's SEO value goes nowhere.

These are broken backlinks, and they're one of the easiest SEO wins available. You already earned the links. You just need to find them and point them at something that works.

This guide shows how to find broken backlinks with free and paid tools, how to decide which are worth fixing, and how to fix each one.

What is a broken backlink?#

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. It becomes broken when the page it points to on your site returns an error, almost always 404 Not Found, sometimes 410 Gone or a server error.

It's different from the broken links you find on your own pages:

• Broken internal links are on your site, pointing to your site. You can see and edit them.
• Broken outbound links are on your site, pointing to other sites.
• Broken backlinks are on someone else's site, pointing to yours. You can't edit them, which is why they're easy to miss. Nothing on your own site looks wrong.

The page that's broken is yours. The link is theirs. The fix, in most cases, happens entirely on your side.

Why broken backlinks are worth fixing#

You're losing link value you already earned. Links from other sites are one of the strongest signals search engines use. When a link points to a dead page, that value is mostly lost. Point the dead URL somewhere useful and much of it comes back.

You're losing visitors. People who click those links wanted something on your site. A 404 page at that moment usually means they leave, and they may not come back.

It's faster than building new links. Earning a new link takes outreach, content and luck. Recovering an old one usually takes a single redirect.

They pile up quietly. Every redesign, migration, deleted page or changed permalink can create new ones, and nothing alerts you when it happens.

How to find broken backlinks: 5 methods#

1. Google Search Console (free)#

Search Console doesn't have a "broken backlinks" report, but you can piece it together from two reports.

Step 1: find the dead URLs. Go to Indexing > Pages and open Not found (404). This lists URLs on your site that Google tried to crawl and got a 404. Many of these were discovered through links, including links from other websites.

Step 2: see what links to them. Click a URL and run Inspect URL. Under the discovery details, Search Console shows referring pages it knows about. If they're on other domains, you've found a broken backlink.

Step 3: check your most-linked pages. Go to Links > Top linked pages (under External links) and export the list. These are the pages on your site with the most backlinks. Paste them into a bulk URL status checker: any that return 404 are your most valuable broken backlinks.

It's free and it's Google's own data. The downside is that it's manual, the data runs a few days behind, and the referring page list isn't complete.

2. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free for your own sites)#

Ahrefs offers its webmaster tools free for sites you verify you own. Once your site is verified, open Site Explorer for your domain and go to the Broken backlinks report (in the backlink profile section). It lists links from other sites that point to URLs on your site returning errors, with the linking page, its authority and the anchor text.

Sort by the authority of the linking page or by the number of referring domains per broken URL, and you have a prioritised list in minutes. This is the fastest free method for most site owners.

3. Paid backlink tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz)#

If you already pay for an SEO suite, it can do this too:

• Ahrefs Site Explorer: Backlink profile > Broken backlinks, for any domain, including competitors.
• Semrush Backlink Analytics: the Indexed Pages report can be filtered to show broken pages that still have backlinks.
• Moz Link Explorer: Top Pages, filtered by status code to show 4xx pages, then View Links to see who links to each.

The advantage of paid tools is coverage and history. The free methods only show what Google or the tool has crawled recently for your verified site.

4. Your server logs (free, technical)#

Every time someone clicks a link to your site, their browser usually sends a Referer header with the page they came from. Your server logs record it.

Filter your access logs for requests that returned 404 and have a referrer on another domain. Each one is a real person who clicked a broken backlink, which also tells you which broken links actually send traffic. Your host's control panel or a log analyser can do the filtering if you'd rather not use the command line.

5. Google Analytics 4 (free, if your 404 page is tracked)#

If your 404 page has a recognisable title such as "Page not found", GA4 can show where visitors to it came from. In Explore, build a free-form report with Page title and Page referrer as dimensions, filter Page title to your 404 title, and look at referrers from other domains.

It only catches broken backlinks that people actually click, but those are exactly the ones costing you visitors.

How to decide which broken backlinks to fix first#

You'll usually find more broken backlinks than you want to deal with. Prioritise by:

1. Links from strong, relevant sites. A link from a respected industry site is worth far more than one from a scraper or directory.
2. URLs with many referring domains. One dead URL with 20 sites linking to it is a bigger win than 20 URLs with one link each.
3. Links that send traffic. Anything showing up in your logs or analytics is costing you visitors today.
4. Pages you deleted that had a clear replacement. These are the quickest fixes.

Ignore links from obvious spam sites. There's nothing to recover there.

How to fix broken backlinks#

Option 1: 301 redirect the dead URL (the usual fix)#

Redirect the old URL with a 301 (permanent) redirect to the most relevant live page: the new version of the same article, the product that replaced the discontinued one, or the category the page belonged to.

• On WordPress, use a redirect plugin or your SEO plugin's redirect manager.
• On Shopify, use the built-in URL redirects (type "URL redirects" in your admin's search bar to find them).
• On other platforms, add the rule in your hosting or server configuration.

Avoid redirecting everything to the homepage. It's tempting, but visitors land somewhere irrelevant, and search engines often treat mass homepage redirects like 404s, so the value isn't passed on.

After adding redirects, check each old URL returns a single 301 to the right page. A redirect chain checker shows every hop, so you can catch chains and loops.

Option 2: restore the page#

If the page was deleted by mistake, or the content is still relevant and the page earned strong links, bring it back at the original URL. This keeps the link value with no redirect at all.

Option 3: ask the linking site to update the link#

If the linking site is valuable and you have a contact, a short, friendly email asking them to update the link to the new URL gives you the cleanest result. It's the most effort, so save it for your best links and redirect the rest.

How to stop new broken backlinks appearing#

Most broken backlinks are self-inflicted: a page gets renamed, moved or deleted without a redirect. A few habits prevent most of them:

• Never change a URL without adding a redirect. Make it part of your publishing checklist.
• Before a redesign or migration, export every URL that has backlinks and map each one to its new home. Our guide to redesigning without losing SEO walks through it.
• Check your top linked pages after every big change. Paste them into a bulk URL status checker after launch.
• Monitor the pages that matter. MyKavo watches your most important pages against an approved baseline and alerts you the moment one starts returning 404, redirects somewhere new or changes its status, so a page with valuable backlinks never stays broken for weeks before anyone notices.

The bottom line#

Broken backlinks are links you already earned, pointing at pages that no longer work. Find them with Search Console or a free backlink tool, prioritise the strongest and most-clicked ones, and fix them with a 301 redirect to the most relevant live page.

Start by checking your most-linked pages with the free Bulk URL Status Checker, then let MyKavo watch them so you hear about the next broken one the day it happens.