If you’ve ever clicked on a link and landed on a “404 Page Not Found” message, you’ve experienced a broken link. It might seem like a small issue, but broken links can quietly hurt your website’s performance, credibility, and even your search rankings. At R5 Website Management, we pay close attention to issues like these because small technical errors can add up over time.
In this post, we’ll explain what broken links are, why they matter, and how we go about finding and fixing them to keep your site running smoothly.
What Is a Broken Link?
A broken link is a hyperlink that leads to a page that no longer exists or can’t be reached. These can show up in a few different ways:
- A deleted or moved page
- The link contains a typo
- The external website you linked to has changed or gone offline
When someone clicks a broken link, they’re met with an error message instead of landing on useful content. This isn’t just frustrating for visitors, it also signals to search engines that your site might not be well maintained.
Why Broken Links Are a Problem
There are two main reasons broken links are worth fixing:
- User Experience
Visitors come to your site expecting helpful content. When they hit a dead end, it creates friction. Too many of these bad experiences can lead people to leave your site early, lowering your engagement and credibility. - Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engines crawl your site to understand how pages are connected. Broken links interrupt that process and can negatively affect how your site is ranked. Google sees broken links as a sign that a website isn’t being properly managed.
At R5 Website Management, we view link health as part of your site’s overall reliability. Clean, working links show that your site is up-to-date and well cared for.
How We Find Broken Links
We use specialized tools to scan your website regularly. These tools go through every link, both internal (within your site) and external (to other websites), and flag anything that leads to an error page.
In many cases, broken links are easy to miss without these tools. A page might have been removed months ago, or an external site you linked to may have quietly changed its URL. That’s why regular monitoring matters.
How We Fix Broken Links
Once broken links are identified, we handle them in one of three ways, depending on the situation:
- Update the link if the correct page still exists but the URL has changed
- Redirect the link if the content has moved to a new location
- Remove the link if there’s no suitable replacement and it no longer serves a purpose
Each fix is chosen based on what’s best for both your users and your site structure. Our goal is to protect your site’s performance while maintaining a smooth experience for your visitors.
We’re Ready to Help
Broken links might seem small, but they can have a big impact over time. Keeping your website healthy means checking the details, like links, that users and search engines both rely on. At R5 Website Management, we make sure your site stays clean, current, and free of digital dead ends. Reach out to us today,
