How to Find Broken Backlinks to Your Website (and Reclaim Them)
Find links from other sites that point to dead pages on yours, and recover their value quickly.
Over the years, other websites link to your pages. When you delete or rename a page without a redirect, those links lead to a 404 error. You lose the value of the link, and visitors who click it hit a dead end. Recovering these links is one of the fastest link-building wins available.
Step 1: Find your 404 pages with links
- Search Console โ the Page indexing report's "Not found (404)" list shows URLs Google tried to crawl. Check which ones had links.
- Backlink tools โ many show "broken backlinks" or lost links pointing to 404 pages.
- Analytics โ look for visits to your 404 page and their referrers.
- Server logs โ external referrers to missing URLs.
Step 2: Check each URL
Confirm the URL really returns a 404 and see where it used to point. The broken link checker confirms status codes; archived copies of the old page can remind you what it contained.
Step 3: Choose the fix
- Close replacement exists โ 301 redirect the old URL to it. This recovers most of the value immediately.
- Content was removed by mistake โ restore the page.
- A typo in the linking site's URL โ redirect the misspelled URL to the right page, or ask the site owner to correct it.
- Nothing relevant exists โ consider creating a new page on that topic if the links are valuable.
Avoid redirecting everything to the homepage โ see 301 vs 302 redirects.
Step 4: Ask for link updates on important sites
For high-value links, email the site owner with the new URL. Direct links are cleaner than redirects, and most editors appreciate fixing broken links on their pages.
Prevent new broken backlinks
- Add redirects whenever you change or delete URLs.
- Keep a redirect map during redesigns โ see the website migration checklist.
- Check your 404 report monthly.
A worked example
A Singapore design agency rebuilt its website and dropped its old "/resources/" section. A year later, it found 35 sites still linking to old resource URLs, including two universities. It restored the two most-linked guides and redirected the rest to updated equivalents. Within weeks, those links were counting again and the restored guides started ranking.
A quarterly link reclamation routine
- Export 404 URLs from Search Console.
- Check which of them have external links in your backlink tool.
- Sort by the strength and relevance of the linking sites.
- Add 301 redirects for the top ones to the closest live pages.
- Email owners of the most important linking pages with the new URL.
- Look for unlinked mentions of your brand and ask for a link where it helps readers.
An hour each quarter usually recovers more link value than weeks of new outreach.
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Frequently asked questions
Do broken backlinks hurt SEO?
They waste link value you already earned. Fixing them recovers it.
Should I redirect every 404?
Only when there is a relevant page or the old URL has links or traffic.
How quickly do redirects recover link value?
Usually within weeks, as search engines recrawl the linking pages.
What is link reclamation?
Recovering value from links that point to broken pages or mention you without linking.