Add to Preferred Sources
A website broken link audit guide is a systematic process for finding every URL on your site that returns an error — the 404 pages, missing images and failed redirects — and deciding whether to fix, redirect or remove each one. If you work with a web design Johannesburg team, they should be running this as part of regular maintenance; if you manage your own site, this guide gives you the exact steps to do it without a paid tool for sites under 500 pages.
Google is explicit about what happens when a URL returns a 4xx status code: crawling frequency decreases, previously indexed pages are removed from the index, and any link equity flowing through that dead URL goes nowhere. For South African business websites where organic search drives a significant share of enquiries, a handful of unresolved broken internal links can quietly erode rankings over weeks without triggering any visible alert in your analytics dashboard. The good news is that a basic dead link audit costs nothing — Google Search Console is free, and Screaming Frog's crawler handles sites under 500 pages without a licence.
This guide gives you the exact steps in the right order, plus a decision table for each type of broken link you find — because knowing you have a 404 is not the same as knowing what to do about it.
Quick Answer
A website broken link audit guide covers three stages: find dead URLs using Google Search Console (Indexing → Pages → Not found (404)), crawl your site with Screaming Frog (free for sites under 500 pages) to locate every internal link pointing to those dead pages, then fix each one — either with a 301 redirect to a genuinely relevant page, by updating the source link directly, or by removing the link if no relevant replacement exists. Run the full audit quarterly and immediately after any page deletion or URL restructure.
In This Guide
Not sure where your site's dead links are hiding?
Share your URL and we will run a quick crawl and flag the issues worth acting on first.
Request a Link AuditWhy Broken Links Harm SA Business Websites
Broken links reduce the value of your entire site's link structure, not just the affected page. When Googlebot follows an internal link and lands on a 404, it treats that content as non-existent: according to Google's official documentation on HTTP error handling, any content received from 4xx URLs is ignored, previously indexed pages are removed from the index, and crawling frequency gradually decreases for those URLs. The link equity you built — through backlinks, internal architecture and content — stops flowing to the pages that depend on it.
For the visitor, a dead link is worse than a blank result. They clicked with intent and landed on an error page. In South Africa, where users often navigate on mobile data and have less patience for site friction, a broken link frequently reads as a sign that the business is not actively maintaining its web presence. That first impression affects both conversion rate and trust.
There is also a crawl budget dimension. Googlebot does not have unlimited resources to spend on your site. Each 404 it encounters uses crawl capacity that could instead be spent discovering and re-indexing your valuable content. For smaller South African sites competing in local search — a Johannesburg law firm, a Pretoria logistics company, a Cape Town e-commerce store — every wasted crawl request has an opportunity cost on site crawlability.
Key Point
Google removes previously indexed pages that return 404 errors and gradually reduces crawl frequency for those URLs. Broken internal links also stop link equity from flowing through your site's architecture — quietly weakening the pages that depend on it for rankings.
What a Broken Link Audit Covers
A complete website broken link audit guide examines four categories of errors, each with a different source and a different fix path.
Internal broken links are pages within your own site that link to a URL on the same domain that no longer exists. These are the highest priority because they directly interrupt Googlebot's crawl path and break your site's internal link equity flow.
External broken links are links from your pages to third-party URLs that have since gone offline or changed without a redirect in place. These do not directly affect your rankings but damage credibility — a resource article linking to a government form that now returns a 404 tells readers you are not maintaining the content.
Broken images are src attributes on image tags pointing to files that no longer exist at that path. These generate 404 errors in the server log even though they do not appear as text links. Crawl tools catch them; manual review often misses them.
Soft 404s are pages that return a 200 (success) HTTP status but display content that indicates an error — "page not found," empty search results, a deleted product with a blank layout. Google flags these separately in Search Console because the HTTP response and the page content contradict each other.
A soft 404 is a page that tells the server "everything is fine" (200 OK status) but tells the user "this page doesn't exist." A WooCommerce product set to draft, for example, may still return a 200 status but serve an empty or near-empty page — Google will flag it under Soft 404 in Search Console's Pages report rather than in the standard Not found (404) list. You need to check both.
Step-by-Step Website Broken Link Audit Guide for SA Sites
Work through these four steps in order — skipping Search Console and going straight to a crawl tool misses the Googlebot-specific errors that matter most for indexing.
Step 1: Start in Google Search Console
Google Search Console shows you which URLs Googlebot has actually encountered and flagged as errors during its own crawls. This is different from what a third-party tool finds during a simulated crawl — it reflects real Googlebot behaviour, which is what actually affects your indexing and rankings.
Navigation path: Search Console → Indexing → Pages → Not found (404)
You will see a list of 404 URLs Google has discovered on your site. For each URL, click through to the detail view and check the "Discovered by" section — this shows whether Googlebot found the URL via an internal link, a sitemap entry, an external backlink, or a redirect. That source is what you need to fix, not just the 404 page itself.
Also check "Soft 404" in the same Pages report. If you use WordPress, WooCommerce or any CMS that creates draft or deleted post states, soft 404s frequently accumulate here without appearing in the standard 404 list.
Step 2: Crawl with Screaming Frog (free for sites under 500 pages)
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the most widely used broken link audit tool for small-to-medium sites: the free version crawls up to 500 URLs without registration, covering the full domain for most South African business sites — a 20-page service site, a 150-page e-commerce store, a 200-post blog.
- Download and open Screaming Frog SEO Spider (available at screamingfrog.co.uk)
- Enter your domain in the address bar and click Start
- When the crawl completes, go to the Response Codes tab and filter by Client Error (4xx)
- Select any flagged URL and open the Inlinks tab at the bottom — this shows every page on your site linking to that broken URL
- Export via Bulk Export → Response Codes → 4xx Client Error to get a CSV with every broken URL and the pages linking to it
For sites over 500 pages, a paid Screaming Frog licence is £199 per year. Alternatively, supplement the free crawl with Search Console's Pages data to get coverage beyond the 500-URL limit — Search Console shows what Google has crawled, the tool shows what is linked on the pages it does reach.
Step 3: WordPress sites — add a monitoring plugin
If your site runs on WordPress, a dedicated WordPress SEO setup should include a broken link monitoring plugin running in the background. The free Broken Link Checker plugin (available on WordPress.org) continuously monitors internal and external links and alerts you when a link breaks — useful for sites that publish content regularly and cannot rely on quarterly crawls alone.
The AIOSEO Broken Link Checker plugin scans up to 250 internal links per month on its free tier, with credits renewing each month. Both plugins are actively maintained and work with current WordPress versions.
Step 4: Categorize before you fix anything
Export both data sets — Search Console and Screaming Frog — and group broken links by priority before spending time on fixes. Fixing in order of discovery wastes time on low-impact links while high-equity pages wait.
| Broken Link Type | Priority | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Internal links to 404 pages in site navigation, footers or top-traffic posts | Immediate | Highest user visibility; stops crawl flow and equity in your most-linked-to pages |
| Internal links to 404 pages in body copy of mid-traffic pages | High | Practitioners report these interrupt link equity flow and reduce crawl efficiency — Semrush notes broken internal links make it harder for search engines to crawl a site effectively |
| Sitemap entries pointing to 404 URLs | High | Standard XML sitemap guidance recommends keeping sitemaps accurate; including dead URLs directs crawlers to non-existent content on every crawl cycle |
| External links to dead pages in high-traffic content | Medium | Affects credibility and user experience on your best-read pages |
| External links to dead pages in low-traffic content | Low | Address during the next content refresh cycle — not worth interrupting current work |
How to Fix Each Broken Link
Every broken URL you find requires one of four fixes. The right choice depends on whether the dead URL carries equity worth preserving and whether a genuinely relevant replacement exists.
| Situation | Fix | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Page moved to a new URL permanently | 301 redirect old URL → new URL | Passes most link equity; use the 301 redirect checklist to avoid creating redirect chains |
| Page deleted; similar content exists elsewhere on the site | 301 redirect old URL → most relevant live page | Redirect to a genuinely topically related page — never to the homepage |
| Page deleted; no relevant replacement exists | Remove internal links pointing to it; let the URL return a clean 404 or 410 | A clean 404 is more honest than a misleading redirect |
| Internal link URL is mistyped or outdated | Correct the link in the source page's editor | No redirect needed — fix at the source and the 404 disappears |
| External link points to a dead third-party page | Replace with a working alternative, or remove the link | Check web.archive.org if you need to find what the original page said before removing a citation |
Critical rule: never redirect a deleted page to your homepage as a blanket fix. Google treats a homepage redirect as a soft 404 when the destination is not a relevant replacement for the deleted content. The redirect resolves technically, but Google recognizes it as a non-answer — the URL is not removed from the 404 report and no link equity is restored. Always redirect to the most topically relevant live page, or use a clean 404 or 410 if no suitable destination exists.
After applying fixes, return to Search Console → Pages → Not found (404), select the corrected URLs, and click Validate Fix. Google will re-crawl those URLs over the following days and update the report when the errors resolve.
The Redirect-to-Homepage Rule
Sending all broken URLs to your homepage is not a fix — Google treats it as a soft 404 and does not restore the page's previous indexing status or link equity. Redirect to the most relevant live page, or let the URL return a clean 404 if there is no genuine match. The 301 redirect checklist covers how to structure these correctly and avoid chains.
How Often Should You Run a Broken Link Audit?
As a working rule of thumb, run a full audit quarterly for active sites that publish content regularly. For static brochure sites that change infrequently, every six months is a reasonable cadence — unless you have recently deleted or restructured pages.
Specific triggers that should prompt an immediate audit regardless of schedule:
- Any page deletion or URL slug change
- A site migration or CMS switch
- A new WordPress theme or plugin update that alters post URL structure
- A third-party service you link to — an external booking tool, a government portal, a supplier — rebrands or changes domain
- A significant content pruning or consolidation exercise
For South African sites hosted on local infrastructure, server restarts during power events can occasionally produce temporary 5xx (server error) responses that appear alongside 4xx errors in crawl logs. These are server errors rather than broken links and should be investigated with your hosting provider separately — fixing internal links will not resolve an underlying hosting issue. Monitoring tools that distinguish between 4xx (content absent) and 5xx (server unavailable) will help you tell the two apart.
Audit Triggers
Run an immediate broken link audit after any page deletion, URL restructure, CMS migration or theme change — not at the next quarterly interval. According to Google's documentation, previously indexed pages that return 404 errors are removed from the index, so structural changes that create broken links without prompt fixes can cost you indexed pages during the next crawl cycle.
Not sure if your last site change broke something?
Share your domain and we will confirm within 24 hours which recent changes created dead links worth prioritising.
Get a Quick Site CheckWhy South African Businesses Choose Growth Pulse Media
Growth Pulse Media was built by someone who ran a large South African ecommerce business before founding the agency — which means a fix broken links website review is treated as an operational issue, not a technical box-tick. A broken internal link on a high-traffic product category page is not the same problem as a broken link in a three-year-old blog post, and the prioritization reflects that.
Our web design services in South Africa include full technical site reviews as part of every ongoing engagement. That means broken links, technical SEO issues and crawl-blocking errors are identified before they compound into a rankings problem — not discovered months after the damage is done. We work with a limited number of clients so every audit gets senior attention rather than a junior working through a tool checklist.
All work is executed in-house in Johannesburg — no white-label subcontracting, no handoffs between a sales team and a delivery team.
Who a Broken Link Audit Is NOT Right For
If your website is a basic brochure site with under ten pages, a manual click-through takes less than five minutes. Click every link, note anything that returns an error, fix it in your editor. No crawl tool, no export, no process needed.
If you are about to rebuild from scratch, move to a new CMS or migrate to a new domain, auditing dead links on the current version wastes time. Design the correct link structure into the new build and run the audit post-launch on the destination site.
A broken link audit is maintenance work — it stops equity from leaking, not creates new authority. Addressing 404 errors protects rankings that might otherwise erode; it does not generate rankings lift in the next 30 days. If a short-term traffic increase is the goal, a content or backlink campaign is more likely to move the needle.
If your publishing workflow frequently removes pages and recreates them under new URLs without updating internal links, a quarterly audit is a patch on a broken workflow. The correct fix is a CMS process that updates or removes internal links before deleting a page — not running the same audit every 90 days to clean up the same recurring problem.
Ready for an audit that tells you what to fix and in what order?
We combine Search Console data with a full crawl to identify the broken links that actually affect your rankings — then prioritise them for you.
Talk to UsFrequently Asked Questions
Do broken links hurt Google rankings?
Broken internal links harm rankings indirectly: they stop link equity from flowing through your site's architecture and cause Googlebot to crawl affected sections less frequently. Google's documentation confirms that pages returning 404 errors are removed from the index if previously indexed, and that crawling frequency decreases for those URLs over time. External broken links — links from your pages to other websites — do not directly affect your rankings but reduce page credibility and send users to error pages.
What is the difference between a 404 and a 410 error?
A 404 (Not Found) indicates the server cannot find the requested URL at this time. A 410 (Gone) signals the content was permanently removed and will not return. Google's documentation treats both identically for indexing purposes — both result in the URL being removed from the index, and crawling frequency decreases the same way for each. In practice, 410 is rarely used because most CMS platforms return 404 by default on deleted pages; from a practical standpoint, using either correctly and consistently is the priority for your CMS workflow.
Should I redirect all 404 pages to my homepage?
No. Redirecting a deleted page to the homepage when the homepage is not a relevant replacement is treated by Google as a soft 404 — the redirect resolves technically, but Google recognizes the destination as a non-answer and does not restore the page's previous link equity or indexing status. The correct approach is to redirect to the most topically relevant live page, or to leave the URL returning a clean 404 or 410 if no suitable destination exists.
Can I use Google Search Console alone to find all broken links?
Search Console shows you 404 URLs that Googlebot has actually encountered, but it does not show every internal link pointing to each dead page, and it may miss broken links on pages Google has not crawled recently. A crawl tool like Screaming Frog completes the picture by mapping every internal link on every crawled page. Use both: Search Console for what Googlebot has seen and flagged, Screaming Frog for the full site-wide link map.
How long does it take Google to reflect broken link fixes in Search Console?
After you apply fixes and click Validate Fix in Search Console, Google re-crawls the affected URLs over the following days to a few weeks, depending on your site's crawl frequency and authority. Pages with more internal links or significant backlinks tend to be re-crawled faster. The fix is confirmed when the URL stops appearing in the Not found (404) report or moves to the "Validated" state in the Coverage detail view.
Get a Technical Site Review That Covers More Than Dead Links
Growth Pulse Media's site reviews combine broken link detection with a full technical SEO assessment — crawl depth, redirect chains, sitemap accuracy and on-page structure. All executed in-house by a senior strategist, not a tool running on autopilot.
No obligation — we will get back to you within 24 hours.
Request Your Review