Broken Link
A broken link is a hyperlink pointing to a URL that returns a 4xx or 5xx error — typically a 404 Not Found — meaning the destination page no longer exists or the link was never correct.
A broken link is any link — internal or external — where following it doesn't deliver a functioning page. The most common cause is content deletion without a redirect, URL structure changes that orphaned old URLs, or external sites linking to pages that have since been removed. The specific error code matters: a 404 means no resource was found at that URL; a 410 signals it's permanently gone; a 500 means the server failed to respond.
From an SEO perspective, broken internal links fragment your site's crawl paths and internal link structure. PageRank flows through internal links — a page only reachable through broken links isn't being crawled or accumulating link equity properly. Broken inbound links are worse: if an authoritative external site links to a URL you've deleted without redirecting, that authority disappears into a 404 instead of benefiting your site.
Broken external links — where you're linking out to other sites that have removed their content — don't directly affect rankings, but they degrade user experience and signal a site that isn't being maintained. For content-heavy B2B sites with extensive resource sections and long-form articles, accumulated external broken links are a hygiene problem worth auditing quarterly.
The practical fix: audit broken links using Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console's Coverage report. For broken internal links, either implement a 301 redirect to the best-match current page or correct the link. For broken inbound external links pointing to deleted pages, implement a 301 from the dead URL to the most relevant live page — recovering the link equity rather than letting it disappear into a crawl error.
Broken inbound links waste link equity — external sites linking to deleted pages are pointing authority at a 404 instead of a live page, and a 301 redirect immediately recovers that equity
Broken internal links interrupt crawl paths — Googlebot follows internal links to discover and index content, and a 404 at a link destination ends that path, potentially leaving downstream pages with insufficient crawl frequency
Search Console flags broken links as coverage errors that grow over time — unresolved 404s compound as more content is deleted without redirect hygiene, eventually creating a measurable crawl and indexing problem
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