Common Causes and How to Fix Them

What Are Broken Links?

A broken link—also referred to as a “dead link”—is a hyperlink that doesn’t work. When you click on a broken link, it fails to take you to the intended page.

Hyperlinks usually appear as text or images that are underlined or highlighted.

For example, a hyperlink on the Semrush blog looks like this:

But why do links break?

Let’s explore why links become broken and how to fix them.

Why Do Links Become Broken?

The Target Page Is Deleted or Moved

One of the most common reasons a link breaks is because the target page is deleted or moved to a new URL without updating the link.

Deleted pages lead the user to a 404 Not Found error page.

For example, let’s say eBay creates a temporary sale page (www.ebay.com/new-years-sale) and links it across its site.

After the sale, they delete the page but forget to remove the links.

Customers clicking the old link to this page will now get a 404 error and land on a page that looks like this:

The 404 error page shows users that the site could not find the requested page. Potentially leaving users frustrated and confused.

Incorrectly Formatted URL

An incorrectly formatted URL can lead to a 400 bad request error.

A 400 bad request error is similar to a 404 but occurs when there’s a problem with the requested URL.

How does this happen?

You may have misspelled the link when adding it to a page. Or someone may have mistyped the URL on the page you’re linking to.

For example, say you want to link to a product page at ...