Link rot is what happens to links as the web changes: pages are deleted, sites are redesigned, URLs are renamed without redirects and domains expire. On your own site it leaves readers at dead ends and wastes crawling. Pointing inward, it means links you earned now land on 404 pages, so the value they carried is lost. The cure is the same in both directions: redirect moved pages, check links on a schedule and update or remove the ones that break.
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Outbound and internal links
Crawl your site regularly and list links that return 404, 410 or server errors, and links that go through redirects. Fix internal links to point straight at the final URL. For outbound links, find the moved page, link to an archived copy, or replace the source. Older blog posts and stats pages tend to collect the most broken references.
Inbound links
Your own URL changes create link rot for everyone linking to you. Keep a redirect map whenever you rename or remove pages, and check backlink tools and the Search Console Links report for links landing on 404s. Redirecting those URLs to the closest relevant page recovers them, which is the idea behind 404 link reclamation.
Example
A redesign that broke old guides
A fictional CRM, Pipewren, moves its blog from /blog/post-name to /resources/post-name without redirects. Months later, links from partner sites and old newsletters land on 404s. Adding one-to-one redirects from the old paths restores those links, and an internal crawl fixes the hundreds of internal links still pointing at the old URLs.
Common mistakes
Redirecting everything to the homepage
Google may treat irrelevant redirects as soft 404s. Redirect each URL to its closest equivalent.
Only checking at launch
Links break continuously. Put link checks on a regular schedule.
Frequently Asked Questions
Google does not describe them as a ranking factor, but they make pages less useful and signal neglect to readers. Fix them as part of content upkeep.
Check Search Console for 404 URLs that have links, and use a backlink tool to list referring pages whose targets return errors.
Keep reading
- 404 Link Reclamation: 404 link reclamation finds backlinks pointing to your pages that now return 404 and redirects those URLs so the links work and count again.
- Broken Link Building: Broken link building means finding links on other sites that point to dead pages, then suggesting your relevant page as a working replacement.
- 301 Redirect: A 301 redirect is an HTTP response telling browsers and search engines a URL has moved permanently to a new address.
- Redirect map: A redirect map is a list pairing every old URL with its new destination before a migration or restructure. It is the core document of a safe site move.
- Authority Score: Authority Score is a Semrush metric from 1 to 100 that grades a site or page using link, traffic and spam signals. Google does not use it.
- Backlink: A backlink is a link from another website to a page on yours. Search engines use backlinks to find pages and as one signal of which pages are worth ranking.
- Blogger Outreach: Blogger outreach is contacting writers, editors and site owners to tell them about a resource, story or expert that could be useful to their readers.
- Citation Building: Citation building means listing a business in directories and data sources. Useful for local and niche visibility; poor directories add nothing.
