Google Search Console already lists the broken links on your site, for free, with no plugin and no load on your server. A free crawler finds the rest. The fix then depends on one thing: whether the dead link points at a page you control or at somebody else’s website, because those need completely different answers.
Nearly every guide on this opens by telling you to install a plugin, and most are published by the company selling it.
What causes broken links?
Six things, and only two of them are anything you did wrong.
Permalink changes. Changing a post’s URL breaks every link pointing at the old one, including links in your own older posts. Moving posts between categories does the same, which our guide to moving WordPress posts without losing SEO covers.
Deleted or renamed pages. A page removed during a tidy-up leaves every internal link to it pointing at a 404.
External sites removing content. The biggest source by volume and entirely outside your control. Sites close, articles get deleted, companies rebrand. A link that worked in 2022 breaks when that company redesigns in 2026.
Migrations and redesigns. Both break links at scale if the URL map is not handled. Our guides to migrating WordPress without downtime and redesigning without losing SEO cover that side.
Typos. A missing character in a pasted URL. Boring and common.
File permissions. This one surprises people. Wrong permissions on the uploads folder make images fail to load, and link checkers report that as a broken link even though the URL is correct and the file is right there.
What actually happens when a link breaks?
Three things, and they are worth separating because the SEO claims in this space run further than the evidence does.
A visitor hits a dead end. The real cost, and immediate. Someone clicked because they wanted what the link promised and got an error page instead. On a contact or pricing link, that is a lost enquiry today.
Crawlers waste time. Search engines allocate limited crawling to your site, and every request landing on a 404 is one that did not find a real page. On a small site this barely matters. On thousands of URLs it does, and our guide to page indexing issues covers when.
Internal authority stops flowing. Internal links pass ranking signals between your pages. A broken one interrupts that path.
You will see it claimed elsewhere that broken links directly lower rankings as a quality signal. That is widely asserted and thinly evidenced. The three mechanisms above are real and sufficient. Fix broken links because visitors hit them, not because of a penalty nobody has demonstrated.
Find them free, without a plugin
Three methods, in the order I use them.
Start with Search Console. Go to Indexing, then Pages, then open the “Not found (404)” report. That lists every URL Google crawled on your site that returned a 404, free and already collected. Click any row to see which pages link to it. Fifteen minutes here beats an hour anywhere else, because these are the dead links Google actually hit.
Then run a crawler. Screaming Frog crawls 500 URLs free, which covers most small business sites in one pass. Enter your domain, start the crawl, filter by Client Error 4xx. It finds dead links nobody has clicked yet, which Search Console cannot report on. Ahrefs and Semrush do the same job if you already pay for one.
Then check your top pages by hand. Open your five or six highest-traffic pages and click every link. It takes ten minutes and it catches things a crawler classes as working, such as a link that resolves to a live page about something completely different.
Those three cover almost everything without installing anything on your site.
When is a plugin actually the right call?
Sometimes, and the honest version has a caveat nobody states clearly.
The classic Broken Link Checker plugin crawls your own site from your own server. That is why some hosts block link checkers outright and why cloud-based versions now exist. A tool that loads your server to find dead links is a strange trade on shared hosting.
A plugin earns its place when the site is large, when nobody technical is available to run a crawler, or when you want continuous monitoring rather than a monthly check. If you already use Rank Math, its 404 monitor logs every dead URL a visitor hits without adding anything new.
Under a few hundred pages, with someone willing to spend twenty minutes a month, Search Console and a free crawler do the same job with nothing installed.
Fixing them: four situations, four fixes
This is where the standard advice goes wrong. Almost every guide says “set up a 301 redirect.” That is correct in exactly one of the four situations below.
| What broke | The fix |
| Internal link, the page moved | 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one |
| Internal link, typo in the URL | Edit the link. No redirect needed |
| External link, the page was deleted | Replace it with a live source, unlink it, or link the Wayback Machine copy |
| External link, the whole site is gone | Unlink it |
The blanket advice fails for one reason: you cannot redirect somebody else’s website. A 301 lives on your server and controls only your URLs. When an external link dies, redirecting is not available, and a large share of the dead links on an established blog are external.
For those, unlinking is a complete fix. As one WordPress.org support thread puts it, removing the link is just as effective, because the dead link no longer exists. You are not losing anything by deleting a link that goes nowhere.
One more thing to avoid: redirecting every 404 to your homepage. Google treats that as a soft 404, and the visitor lands somewhere that does not answer what they clicked for. Redirect to the closest equivalent page or let it 404 honestly.
If you do need to set up redirects at volume, our guide to handling redirects during a platform move covers the mechanics.
Which ones should you fix first?
You have probably just run a scan and found ninety dead links, most of them external ones in posts from 2021. Do not work that list top to bottom.
First, broken links on your highest-traffic pages. Somebody is hitting these today.
Second, broken internal links pointing at money pages. Contact, pricing, checkout, service pages. These cost you directly.
Third, broken internal links anywhere else. Real, worth fixing, not urgent.
Fourth, external links in old posts. Genuinely low priority. The web breaks these constantly and none of it is your doing. Clean them in a batch when you have an hour, or unlink the worst and move on.
That ordering is the same principle as our WordPress site audit guide: sort findings by what they cost you, not by what a tool flagged first.
Broken backlinks are a different problem
Worth separating, because these two get confused constantly.
A broken link is a link on your site pointing at something dead. A broken backlink is a link on someone else’s site pointing at a page of yours that no longer exists. The first is yours to fix. The second is free authority sitting on the floor.
Find them in the same Search Console 404 report, by checking which dead URLs have external referrers. Redirect that dead URL to the closest live page and you recover the value of a link somebody else gave you.
This is the one situation where hunting down old 404s pays for itself rather than just tidying up.
How often should you check?
Monthly is a reasonable default, with three moments when it should be immediate: after a migration, after a redesign, and after changing permalink structure, which breaks every existing URL at once.
A site that changes rarely and links out little can go quarterly. Publish weekly and link out heavily and monthly is the floor. Checking after every publish is unnecessary, since new links rarely break on the day you add them.
Key takeaways
You can fix broken links in WordPress without installing anything. Search Console’s “Not found” report lists the dead URLs Google has already hit, a free Screaming Frog crawl finds the rest, and ten minutes clicking through your top pages catches what both miss.
The fix depends on ownership. Internal links that moved get a 301 redirect, internal typos get edited, and external links that died get replaced or unlinked, because you cannot redirect a website you do not control.
Then fix in order of consequence. High-traffic pages first, money pages second, everything else after that. External link rot in old posts is normal maintenance rather than a failure, and treating it as an emergency wastes an afternoon you could spend on the links people are actually clicking.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check for dead links on my WordPress site?
Open Google Search Console, go to Indexing, then Pages, then the “Not found (404)” report. It lists every dead URL Google has crawled, free and already collected. For links nobody has clicked yet, run a free Screaming Frog crawl of up to 500 URLs and filter by Client Error 4xx.
What causes broken links on a website?
Permalink changes, deleted or renamed pages, external sites removing content, migrations and redesigns without a URL map, typos in pasted links, and occasionally file permission problems that make images fail to load. External link rot is the largest source and it is entirely outside your control.
What happens if a link is broken?
A visitor clicks and lands on an error page, which costs you immediately if the link was to a contact or pricing page. Crawlers also waste requests on dead URLs, and broken internal links interrupt the authority passing between your pages. Direct ranking penalties are widely claimed and thinly evidenced.
How do I restore a dead link?
If the page moved, redirect the old URL to the new one. For an external page that was deleted, search the Wayback Machine for an archived copy and link that instead, or replace it with a current source covering the same ground. When the whole site is gone, unlinking is a complete fix.
Do I need a broken link checker plugin?
Usually not. The classic plugin crawls your site from your own server, which is why some hosts block link checkers entirely. Search Console and a free crawler do the same job with nothing installed. A plugin makes sense on large sites, or when you want continuous monitoring rather than a monthly check.
Want this handled rather than scheduled?
Most people fix broken links once, mean to check again, then get to it eighteen months later after a redesign has broken four hundred more. Survyc is an AI-first digital agency, and we handle link audits and redirect mapping for businesses and agencies, including the migration and redesign work where these break at scale. To have it run on a schedule instead, that is what our WordPress care plans do, and our guide to what a WordPress repair costs covers one-off work. Send us the URL or email info@survyc.com.
