The link health blog
Practical guides on finding and fixing broken links — 404s, status codes, link rot, and what dead links really do to SEO.
How to Find Broken Links on Any Website (3 Free Methods)
A browser extension for the pages in front of you, a crawler for whole sites, Search Console for the 404s Google found — how each works and when to use it.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23How to Fix Broken Links: Redirect, Replace, or Remove
The decision tree for every dead link — when to 301, when to fix at the source, how to use archived copies, and the mistakes (homepage redirects, chains) that make things worse.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23Do Broken Links Hurt SEO? What Google Actually Says
No penalties — but real costs: severed crawl paths, evaporated link equity, and visitors bouncing off error pages. What to fix first, and what to safely ignore.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23What Is a 404 Error? Meaning, Causes, and How to Fix It
What the code actually means, 404 vs 410 vs soft 404, the usual causes — and the right fix for each one. Plus the CERN room myth, debunked.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23HTTP Status Codes for Link Checking: 200, 301, 404, 500 Explained
Which codes are truly broken, which are fine, and which — 403, 429 — are bot-blocks in disguise that naive checkers mislabel. With a cheat-sheet table.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23Link Rot: Why 38% of the Web Has Already Disappeared
Pew found 38% of 2013's pages gone by 2023; half of Supreme Court citations are dead. Why links die, and how to keep your site off the casualty list.
Read the guide →Put the guides into practice
Broken Link Checker is a free Chrome extension that scans the page you're on and highlights every dead link — no signup, no server.