Broken Link Checker: Common Mistakes and Best Practices

Most problems with broken Link Checker aren't caused by not knowing what to do — they're caused by small, easy-to-miss mistakes that compound quietly over time. Here are the ones that come up most often.

Mistake 1: Only checking navigation and footer links while ignoring links buried in years of blog content, where most rot actually accumulates.

Mistake 2: Fixing the visible symptom (the link) without checking whether the destination page itself has other structural problems.

Mistake 3: Redirecting every dead link to the homepage as a default — it's better than a 404, but a targeted redirect preserves far more relevance.

The fix for most of these isn't more effort, it's a regular check. A few habits that prevent them from creeping back in:
- Set up a recurring check (monthly for an active site) rather than a one-time audit — links break continuously as other sites reorganize.
- When a page is permanently gone, 301-redirect its old URL to the closest relevant replacement instead of just letting it 404.

Worth reading alongside this: our guide to search intent, which covers the adjacent side of the same part of a technical SEO audit.

Broken Link Checker catches most of this automatically, which is the easiest way to stop these mistakes from shipping in the first place.

Everything in this guide runs directly in your browser — no signup, no install.