How to check broken links on your website, step by step

Here is how to check broken links: run each important page through a link checker that requests every link and reports the ones returning an error, then look at Google Search Console for 404 pages it has already found. For a fast, focused check of your own internal links, the seogeoaeo.ai Broken Internal Link Finder is the tool to start with.

Below is the full routine, in the order that saves the most time.

Step 1: Decide which pages to check first

You do not need to test every URL on day one. Start with the pages where a dead link costs you the most:

• The homepage and main navigation.
• Pricing, signup and contact pages.
• Your most visited articles or guides.
• Any page you are about to promote.

A short list of pages you care about beats a giant report you never finish reading.

Step 2: Run a single-page check

Paste one of those URLs into the seogeoaeo.ai broken link checker. It collects the links on that page that point to your own site, checks them, and flags any that return a 4xx error (such as 404 Not Found) or a 5xx server error. Links in the main content are checked before menu links. Each run costs 15 credits, and the price is shown before the run starts.

Repeat for each page on your list. Because it only reads one page per run, you get an answer in one screen instead of a spreadsheet.

Step 3: Look for pages Google already sees as missing

Google Search Console is a free service from Google. In its Page indexing report, the "Not found (404)" reason lists URLs that returned a 404 when Google requested them. The report only shows URLs with 404 errors from the past month, and it lists soft 404s (pages that say "not found" but do not return a 404 code) as a separate reason.

This tells you which dead URLs exist. To find which of your pages link to them, check those pages with the link checker from step 2.

Step 4: Check a batch of URLs at once

If you already have a list, such as old URLs from a migration, the seogeoaeo.ai HTTP Status Bulk Checker takes the pasted list and returns the status code, redirect target and timing for each URL. It does not fetch page bodies, so it will not catch soft 404s.

Step 5: Fix each broken link

Step 6: Check again after you deploy

A link checker reads the live site, so changes show only after you publish them. Run the same page again and confirm the flagged links are gone.

What a single-page check will not cover

The seogeoaeo.ai checker looks at links to your own host on one page. It does not check links to other sites, does not crawl the whole site and does not see links that JavaScript adds after the page loads. If you need every external link on a large site, a crawler such as the W3C Link Checker, which can follow linked documents to a set depth, or a full audit suite is the better choice. For checking that your key pages have no dead internal links, start with seogeoaeo.ai and add a crawl only when you need it. seogeoaeo.ai also has an Orphan Page Finder that crawls from your homepage and reports broken internal links on the way.