Broken Links
404 errors on internal links waste crawl budget, lose PageRank equity, and frustrate visitors. WebsiteCoach crawls up to 40 links from your homepage and HEAD-checks each one.
Ludwig Makhyan · Founder, WebsiteCoach ·
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Executive Overview
Broken links — internal links that return 404 or 500 errors — are a signal of neglect that affects both users and search engines. When Google's crawler follows a broken link, it stops, wastes its crawl budget allocation on your site, and the PageRank that would have passed through that link is lost. For users, a 404 error is a dead end that increases bounce rate and undermines trust.
Business Impact
Studies show that 404 errors increase bounce rate by 10–30% for affected pages. For e-commerce sites, a product page returning 404 means lost purchases. Broken links on key conversion paths (checkout, contact, demo booking) can directly reduce revenue. Sites with many 404 errors may also see reduced crawl frequency from Google.
Source: WebsiteCoach extracts up to 40 internal links from your homepage HTML and HEAD-checks each one via Cloudflare Workers.
Key Concepts Explained
- Up to 40 internal links crawled
- This is a sample of homepage links, not a full-site crawl. Expand coverage when auditing a larger site.
- Each link HEAD-checked for 404 / 500
- A HEAD response can differ from GET. Confirm a reported failure with a normal request before removing the link.
- Broken links listed with URL & status
- Use each URL and status to locate the source link. Correct the destination or remove a link that no longer serves a purpose.
- Redirect links listed separately
- Redirected links may still work. Link directly to the final canonical destination when it is appropriate.
- Score based on broken link density
- The score depends on the sampled links. Read the failures and sample size alongside the headline score.
- Cloudflare false-positive paths excluded
- Infrastructure paths can resemble broken content links. Exclusions reduce noise but do not verify all remaining links.
Role-Specific Action Plan
- →Set up 301 redirects for all moved or renamed pages immediately after any URL change
- →Configure a custom 404 page that links to key pages — reduces bounce rate for unavoidable 404s
- →Implement a redirect map in nginx/Cloudflare before any site migration
- →Run a full site crawl with Screaming Frog or WebsiteCoach after any CMS or URL structure change
- →Update all internal links pointing to moved pages directly to the final URL (don't rely on 301s for internal links)
- →Ensure navigation and footer links are reviewed after any site redesign
- →Monitor Google Search Console > Coverage report for 404 errors Google has encountered
- →Submit an updated XML sitemap after fixing broken links
- →Use internal link equity to redistribute authority from high-authority pages to key conversion pages
- →When deleting or renaming a page, always coordinate with the dev team to set up a redirect
- →Regularly audit internal links in blog posts — older posts frequently link to deprecated pages
Frequently asked questions
What is Broken Links?
404 errors on internal links waste crawl budget, lose PageRank equity, and frustrate visitors. WebsiteCoach crawls up to 40 links from your homepage and HEAD-checks each one.
Why does Broken Links matter?
Studies show that 404 errors increase bounce rate by 10–30% for affected pages. For e-commerce sites, a product page returning 404 means lost purchases. Broken links on key conversion paths (checkout, contact, demo booking) can directly reduce revenue. Sites with many 404 errors may also see reduced crawl frequency from Google.
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