Broken links: how to find and fix them on a WordPress site
A broken link is a link that leads to a page that no longer exists, so the visitor gets a 404 error instead of the content they expected. Fix it by editing the link to point at the correct URL, or, if many links and outside sites point at the dead URL, by adding a 301 redirect to its real replacement.
Broken internal links are rated critical because they are entirely self-inflicted: your own pages sending readers and crawlers into dead ends. One or two will not hurt rankings on their own, but they waste visits, and a site full of them looks neglected to people and wastes crawler effort.
What it looks like in the HTML
Before
<p>See our <a href="/cold-brew-recipe-2023/">cold brew recipe</a>.</p>
<!-- /cold-brew-recipe-2023/ was renamed and now returns 404 -->
After
<p>See our <a href="/cold-brew-recipe/">cold brew recipe</a>.</p>
<!-- link updated to the live URL, which returns 200 -->
Why it matters
Every broken link is a small failure a visitor notices. They clicked because they wanted something, and got an error page. Some will search again; many will leave.
For search engines, a broken link is a wasted request and a lost path to your content. Links pass signals between pages, and a link to a 404 passes them nowhere. If the dead URL used to be a popular page with backlinks from other sites, the loss is bigger: those backlinks now point at nothing. See 301 vs 404 for when a dead URL should be redirected and when it should be left as a 404.
How WordPress sites collect broken links
- Changed slugs. Editing a post's URL slug leaves every existing link to the old URL pointing nowhere. WordPress sometimes guesses the new location for old post slugs, but not reliably, and not for pages or terms.
- Changed permalink structure. Switching from
/2024/05/post-name/to/post-name/under Settings → Permalinks changes every post URL at once. - Deleted or unpublished content. Trashing a post or switching it to draft breaks every link to it.
- Migrations. Links typed as absolute URLs to a staging domain or an old domain break once that domain goes away.
- Typos. A missing letter in a hand-typed URL.
How to fix it in WordPress
- Find them. Hydrogen SEO's site audit, run from Hydrogen SEO → Dashboard, lists broken internal links along with the page each one appears on. Google Search Console's Pages report also lists URLs returning Not found (404), which catches broken links from other sites too.
- Fix the link at its source. Open the linking page and edit the link to the correct live URL. This is the cleanest fix, because visitors go straight to the right page with no redirect hop.
- Redirect when the old URL has value. If the dead URL has backlinks or still gets traffic, add a 301 in Hydrogen SEO → Redirections: enter the old path in From URL, the replacement in To URL, and choose 301. Point it at a real replacement, not the homepage; Google often treats irrelevant redirects as soft 404s.
- Prevent new ones. Turn on Auto Redirection on the Redirections screen. When you change the slug of a post, page or term, Hydrogen SEO adds a 301 from the old address to the new one.
- Let truly dead content stay dead. If a page is gone and nothing replaces it, remove the links to it and let the URL return 404.
With a connected account, you can ask the Hydrogen AI agent to "find and fix broken internal links"; it proposes fixes and asks before changing URL behavior. The redirects guide covers redirects in more depth.
How to check the fix
Click the fixed link in a private browser window and confirm it loads the right page. For redirects, check the response: curl -I https://example.com/old-url/ should show 301 Moved Permanently and a Location header with the new URL. Rerun the site audit to confirm the list is shorter, and in Search Console, use Validate fix on the 404 report once you have cleaned up a batch.
Common questions
Do broken links hurt SEO?
A few broken links will not tank rankings, but they waste crawl requests, lose the value of links pointing at dead pages, and frustrate visitors. They are worth fixing because each fix is simple.
Should I redirect every broken link to the homepage?
No. Google often treats redirects to irrelevant pages as soft 404s, and visitors lose what they wanted. Redirect only to a genuine replacement; otherwise let the URL 404 and fix the links.
What about broken links to other websites?
They hurt the reader experience the same way. Update the link to a working source or remove it. They do not affect your site's own URLs.