What is a Broken Link?
A broken link is a link that points to a page or resource that no longer exists. Typically, these linked resources or pages may have been deleted without a redirect put in place.
When a user or website crawler follows a broken link, the server returns a 404 (not found) or a 410 (Gone) status code.
In the SEO world, broken links can be divided into two categories:
- Broken outgoing links (typically referenced as broken links) or;
- Broken backlinks which are links to your website from external domains
Do Broken Links Hurt Your Website’s Organic Performance?
It is normal for a website to have broken links and broken backlinks. Website owners and businesses are constantly changing and adapting with webpages or resource being deleted constantly.
However, the issues arises when a website has too many broken links which can lead to a poor user experience. Additionally, having too many broken links wastes crawl budget, where the crawler could be crawling more important pages in a website’s sitemap.
Broken backlinks are also a great opportunity for website owners or businesses, as these backlinks that lead to 404 pages on a website could potentially pass on link value and authority to a relevant live page on your website, increasing its chances to rank.
