--- title: "Find and fix broken links on your website | Fimo" url: "https://fimo.ai/agents/broken-links" description: "The SEO agent in Fimo checks every internal and outbound link every day, catches link rot and 404s, and prepares each fix in a preview you approve." --- [Agents](/features/agents) [SEO](/agents/seo) Broken links # Broken links, found and _fixed for you_. A page gets renamed, a source disappears, and visitors hit a dead end. Your [SEO agent](/agents/seo) checks every link every day and prepares each fix. --- ## What is a broken link? A broken link points to a page that no longer answers: it returns a 404 error, the domain has expired, or the server times out. Internal broken links lead to your own deleted or moved pages; outbound links lead to other sites that changed. Over time, every site collects them. This slow decay of links is called link rot, and nobody notices it until a visitor clicks. acme.com | Link | Found on | Status | | --- | --- | --- | | /jackets/waxed-2024Fix ready | 6 pages | 404 | | textile-survey.org/2019Fix ready | 1 page | Domain gone | | /guides/rewax-a-jacket | 12 pages | OK | --- ## Why broken links cost more than a 404. A broken link is a promise you do not keep: the visitor wanted a page, a source or a product, and gets an error message instead. Dead links are one of the quickest ways to damage the user experience. Many leave the site right there. Internal broken links also stop the value of your links from flowing between your own pages, and outbound links to dead sources make your claims look unsupported. The longer a site lives, the more links decay without anyone touching them. - 38% of web pages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible ten years later. - 35% of websites have broken internal links. - 25% of websites have broken external links. [Source: Pew Research Center, “When Online Content Disappears” (2024)](https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/) [Source: Semrush, study of 100,000 websites (2016)](https://www.semrush.com/blog/semrush-study-on-site-seo-issues/) --- ## Where broken links come from. Most of them are not mistakes. They are what happens to any site that keeps changing. - ### Pages deleted or renamed An old blog post is removed and every link to it leads nowhere. Renamed pages are safer: Fimo redirects the old address automatically, and the SEO agent points your links straight to the new one. - ### Other sites that move Partners reorganise their docs, tools rename their pages, and the outbound links in your guides stop working overnight. - ### Sources that disappear Studies, articles and reports you cite go offline as their sites close or archive them. The older the page, the more of them go. - ### Links typed by hand A missing letter or an extra slash in a link added in the editor. Easy to make, hard to spot, and invisible until someone clicks. --- ## How it works. Every day, four steps. You only do the last one. 1. ### Follows every link The SEO agent opens every link on every page, internal and outbound, the way a visitor clicking it would. 2. ### Finds what is broken Error pages, expired domains, links that time out, and links that redirect to an unrelated page instead of the one promised. 3. ### Prepares every fix A moved page gets its new address. A link to a page that is gone for good is replaced with a live equivalent or removed. 4. ### You approve, or it publishes The fixes wait in a preview with a short report: publish them, edit them, or turn them down. Or switch the routine to automatic and the SEO agent publishes them itself. Every version of the site is kept. --- ## Before and after. One blog post, three broken links, and what changes once the SEO agent fixes them. The fixes are highlighted. /guides/rewax-a-jacket - **Internal link: “Shop waxed jackets”**: Before:Leads to an old page that no longer exists (404) - After:Leads to the current waxed jackets page - **Outbound link: the wax maker’s care guide**: Before:Leads to an error page since the maker moved its guide - After:Leads to the new address of the guide - **Outbound link: a 2019 study cited as a source**: Before:The study’s website is gone: a case of link rot - After: Replaced with a live source for the same figure --- ## What you get. - ### No dead ends for visitors Every link a visitor clicks leads somewhere useful, so they keep reading instead of leaving. - ### Sources that still hold up The studies and pages you cite stay online, so your claims stay [credible to readers and to AI assistants](/features/seo-geo). - ### Link value kept in your site Working internal links pass authority between your pages, which helps the pages that matter rank. --- ## What it checks. Every link on every page, wherever it sits. - ### Internal links Links between your own pages, in the text, the navigation and the footer, including links to pages that moved and now go through a redirect. - ### Outbound links Like an outbound link checker that never stops: every link that leaves your site is opened, and the ones that fail are fixed or removed. - ### Sources and citations Links to studies, reports and articles you rely on as evidence, checked every day so a dead source never weakens a claim. - ### Redirected links Links that still work but go through one or more redirects. The SEO agent points them straight to the final page, which loads faster. --- ## Works with your tools. The SEO agent checks links itself. Search Console adds the 404s Google found, Semrush or Ahrefs the links from other sites. - ![](https://increasing-magenta-albatross-5c363716c5.fimo.site/uploads/2026/10/14/RjAOwoMo-search.google.com.png) Search Console - ![](https://increasing-magenta-albatross-5c363716c5.fimo.site/uploads/2026/10/14/QMzXTo9x-semrush.com.png) SEMrush - ![](https://increasing-magenta-albatross-5c363716c5.fimo.site/uploads/2026/10/14/vg6ALI2--ahrefs.com.png) Ahrefs --- ## Works well with. The routines that pick up where Broken links stops. - [ ### Internal linking Orphan pages found, links placed in context. ](/agents/internal-linking) - [ ### Technical SEO Indexing, sitemap, redirects, headings. ](/agents/technical-seo) - [ ### SEO monitoring Every change watched, regressions flagged. ](/agents/seo-monitoring) --- ## Questions about broken links. Straight answers. ### How do I find broken links on a website? Identifying broken links by hand means clicking every link on every page. You can also run a crawler, or check the 404 errors in Google Search Console. Most tools that find broken links on website pages stop at the list, and the list grows faster than anyone works through it. The SEO agent checks every link every day and prepares the fix for each one. ### How do I fix broken links? It depends on the link. To fix broken links inside your site, point them to the page’s new address, or add a 301 redirect from the old one, keeping the anchor text, the clickable words, consistent with the page it now leads to. For outbound links, find where the page moved, or replace it with a live equivalent, or link to a saved copy on the Internet Archive, and remove the link when nothing replaces it. The SEO agent prepares each of these fixes in a preview. ### What is link rot? Link rot is the slow decay of links as the pages they point to move or disappear. It affects every site that cites sources: according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, 38% of web pages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible ten years later. Checking links once is not enough, because new ones break every month. [Source: Pew Research Center, “When Online Content Disappears” (2024)](https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/) ### Is the SEO agent an external link checker? Yes, and it goes further. Like a broken link checker or an external link checker, it tests every link on your site, including the ones that leave it. But instead of handing you a report, it finds where each broken page moved, prepares the corrected link, and checks again the next day. ### Do broken links hurt SEO? Not directly: according to Google’s Search Console help, 404 errors do not harm a site’s indexing or rankings in themselves. The cost is indirect. When a page that other sites link to returns a 404, the value of those links is lost unless a 301 redirect sends search engines and visitors to the page that replaced it, which is what Google recommends for moved content. Internal links that lead nowhere stop passing value between your pages, visitors who land on a 404 error page often leave, and dead sources make a page less trustworthy. [Source: Google Search Console Help, “404 (Page Not Found) errors”](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2445990) ### What about links from other sites to my missing pages? Those are often the most valuable, because another site chose to link to you. When Semrush or Ahrefs is connected, the SEO agent sees which of those links land on a missing page and adds a redirect to the closest live page, so the visitors and the value they bring are not lost. ### How is this different from technical SEO? Both are routines of the SEO agent. [Technical SEO](/agents/technical-seo) looks at how Google reads your site: indexing, the sitemap, redirect rules and headings. Broken links looks at every link inside your content, including the ones that point to other websites. ### Which plan includes it? Every plan, Free included: the SEO and GEO agents run on all plans. Paid plans add more AI credits and agent-hours. See the pricing page for the details. --- ## Where to next. [ ### Agent library Every ready-made agent and what it runs on its own, from SEO and GEO to content and compliance. Add yours in plain words. ](/features/agents)[ ### Website Autopilot Agents and your team, side by side. Agents improve the site on their own, and every version is kept, so you can always go back. ](/features/autonomous-agents) --- ## Start with your website. Try Fimo online in seconds. Connect your site when you are ready. [Try Fimo for free](/auth/sign-up) Book a demo