The short answer
Broken links come in three kinds, and each has a different fix. Internal links to your own dead pages waste the link equity that would flow through them: redirect the dead URL to a relevant live page, or fix the link. Outbound links to other sites' dead pages make your content look unmaintained: update or remove them. External links from other sites to your 404s are lost authority you earned: reclaim them with a 301 to the closest live page.
Finding them takes three tools working together: the Page Indexing report in Search Console for the 404s Google already hit, a crawler for your internal and outbound links, and a backlink tool for the external links pointing at your dead pages.
- Reclaiming external links to your 404s is the highest-return fix.
- Redirect a dead URL only to a genuinely relevant page, never blanket to the homepage.
- No single tool finds every broken link. Combine Search Console, a crawler and a backlink tool.
Two Types of Broken Link Damage
Internal broken links
Links within your own site pointing to deleted or moved pages. They break the internal flow of link equity between your important pages and send both users and crawlers to dead ends.
Fix: update the link to the correct URL where one exists, or 301 the dead destination to the most relevant live page. Re-crawl quarterly with Screaming Frog or a site audit tool.
External broken links (reclamation)
Other websites linking to pages that no longer exist on your domain. This is the higher-value case, because you are losing authority another site chose to give you through its own editorial decision.
Fix: in a backlink tool's Broken Backlinks view, list every external URL pointing to a 404 on your site, then 301 each to the closest relevant live page.
Watch the Workflow
Ahrefs demonstrates the whole loop: finding broken links on your own pages, finding broken backlinks pointing at your site, and recovering the equity. The interface has changed since, but the method holds.
Broken Link Building: A 4-Step Outreach System
Find dead links on target sites
Use a backlink tool to find relevant, authoritative pages that link out to 404s. Resource pages (/resources/, /tools/, /links/) are the richest source. Prioritise pages with real organic traffic, not just a high rating.
Create a worthy replacement
Build or identify a live page on your site that covers the same topic as the dead resource, and make it clearly better. Match the format, then add the data, depth or clarity the dead page lacked.
Reach out, briefly and personally
Email the page's editor. Name the specific broken link and its anchor text, note that it now 404s, and offer your page as a replacement. Keep it to three or four sentences and make the swap easy for them.
Follow up once, then move on
A single follow-up after five to seven days is standard. If there is no reply after two emails, move to the next target. Quality of targeting matters as much as volume.
Broken link building is one of the cleaner tactics in our white-hat link building guide, and it works because links still matter, as the importance of backlinks explains.
A Reclamation Example
Illustrative scenario, not client data
A company rebuilt its site last year and dropped its old /guide/email-deliverability page. The URL now 404s. A backlink tool shows eleven external links still pointing at it, including two from industry blogs that rank well. Here is the fix.
- Confirm the loss: the Broken Backlinks view lists all eleven links and the 404 they target. The Page Indexing report confirms Google has marked the old URL as Not found.
- Find the best target: there is a current, stronger deliverability guide at a new URL. It is a genuine replacement, not a loose match.
- Redirect: add a 301 from the old /guide/email-deliverability URL to the new guide. The eleven links now resolve to a live, relevant page and pass their equity through.
- Verify: run the old URL through URL Inspection to confirm Google follows the redirect to the new canonical. Watch the new guide for a lift over the following weeks.
Eleven links recovered in an afternoon, with no outreach. That is why reclamation is the first thing to check after any migration or content cleanup, and why our guide to fixing 404 errors treats inbound links as the signal that decides whether a dead URL gets redirected.
Do not forget your outbound links
External links on your pages that lead to 404s on other sites make your content look dated and unmaintained. Freshness and accuracy, including whether the sources you cite are still live, are part of how quality is judged.
Run a quarterly outbound audit with a crawler, exporting external links and bulk-checking their status, then replace or remove the dead ones. A handful of dead outbound links is normal and not penalised, but a pattern of neglect is a poor signal.
Where Murkuz Fits
Murkuz does not crawl your site to find broken links. That is a crawler's job, and Search Console already lists the 404s Google itself hit in the Page Indexing report. Murkuz is a read-only connector for the data Google, Analytics and Bing hold, queried from inside Claude or ChatGPT. It helps on the ends of this job, not the crawl in the middle.
Before: ask Live_Traffic_Drops what lost traffic this month. A page that fell off a cliff is often one that was removed or now redirects somewhere unhelpful, and Landing_Page_Diagnosis inspects that one page end to end. After: once you ship a 301, ask Inspect_URL whether Google is following the redirect and indexing the target you chose. See the Search Console connector.
Further reading
The references behind this guide, starting with Google's own documentation on redirects and status codes. Each one was opened and read before it was added here.
Official docsGoogle Search Central
Redirects and Google SearchGoogle's reference on redirects: which methods it reads as permanent versus temporary, and how a 301 passes signals. The basis for link reclamation.
Official docsGoogle Search Central
How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors, affect Google SearchHow Google treats 404, 410 and 5xx responses when crawling and indexing. Read it before deciding whether a dead URL should 404, 410 or redirect.
Official docsSearch Console Help
Page Indexing reportExplains the report where Google lists the URLs it could not index, including Not found (404). The fastest free way to see the dead URLs Google already hit.
GuideAhrefs
Broken Link Building: How to Build Links With Broken PagesA practical four-step broken link building process: find dead pages that still attract links, build a replacement, and ask the linking sites to point to yours instead.
GuideMoz
Redirects: How To Use, SEO Impact & Types (301 vs 302)A plain-English primer on redirect types: when a 301 is right versus a 302, how meta refresh differs, and the SEO impact of each. Useful when mapping reclaimed 404s.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do broken internal links hurt SEO?
A broken internal link, one that points to a 404 on your own site, does two things. It wastes the link equity that would have flowed through it, because the path ends at a dead page. And when Googlebot repeatedly hits 404s from your own navigation, it is a small signal that the site is not well maintained, and it spends crawl effort on pages that return nothing. On a large site, hundreds of broken internal links add up on both counts.
What is link reclamation, and why is it high value?
Link reclamation is finding external backlinks that point to 404 pages on your own domain, then adding a 301 redirect from each dead URL to the most relevant live page, so the link equity is recovered instead of lost. It is high value because the link already exists: you are not pitching anyone or earning anything new, just repairing a path that other sites already chose to create. One strong link pointing to a 404 can be worth more than weeks of new outreach once it is reclaimed.
How do I find all the broken links on my site?
Use three sources together. The Page Indexing report in Google Search Console lists the Not found (404) URLs Google itself discovered. A crawler such as Screaming Frog, Ahrefs Site Audit or Semrush Site Audit finds broken internal and outbound links across your whole site. And a backlink tool, such as Ahrefs Site Explorer with its Broken Backlinks view, finds external links pointing to your 404s. Run all three at least quarterly, because dead links accumulate as the web changes.
What is broken link building as an outreach strategy?
Broken link building is earning new links by fixing other people's dead links. You find a broken outbound link on a relevant page, usually one pointing to a resource that no longer exists, create or already have a live page covering the same topic, then email the site owner to flag the broken link and offer yours as a replacement. Response rates tend to be higher than cold guest-post pitches, because you are pointing out a genuine problem on their page rather than just asking for a favour.
What is the difference between a 404 and a 410, and which should I use?
A 404 means Not found and leaves open the possibility the page returns, so Google may keep checking it for a while. A 410 means Gone and signals the removal is permanent, which Google tends to act on slightly faster. In practice Google treats both similarly and drops the URL from the index either way. Use 410 when you have deliberately and permanently removed a page with no replacement, and 404 as the normal default.
Should I redirect every 404 to my homepage?
No. Redirect a dead URL only to a genuinely relevant live page, such as a replacement article or the closest category. Google treats a redirect to an irrelevant page, especially a blanket redirect of many URLs to the homepage, as a soft 404 and effectively ignores it, so you gain nothing. If a removed page has no relevant replacement and no valuable inbound links, letting it return a clean 404 or 410 is the correct choice.