The link health blog
Practical guides on finding and fixing broken links — 404s, status codes, link rot, and what dead links really do to SEO.
Best Broken Link Checker Chrome Extensions in 2026, Compared
The extensions actually worth installing, compared on accuracy, false positives, reporting, and exports — with user counts, ratings, and a plain answer to when an extension is the wrong tool.
Read the comparison → 2026-08-26Broken Link Checker vs Check My Links: Which Extension?
Both free, both scan the current page. The differences: what each calls "broken", Google Docs support, exports, and triage speed. An honest feature-by-feature comparison.
Read the comparison → 2026-08-26Broken Link Checker vs Dr. Link Check: Extension or Crawler?
A page-level extension and a whole-site cloud crawler answer different questions. Scope, scheduling, real pricing, privacy — and the workflow that uses both correctly.
Read the comparison → 2026-08-23Broken Link Building: Turn Dead Links Into Backlinks
Find dead links on relevant sites, offer your content as the replacement, earn the backlink. The full process — prospecting, verification, outreach — with honest response-rate expectations.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23Website Maintenance Checklist: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly
Backups, forms, updates, link scans, 404 reports, redirect audits — every task sorted by cadence, with the reasoning behind each so you can adapt it to your site.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23Internal vs External Links: What They Do and How They Break
Internal links break only by your hand; external ones rot on other people's schedules; backlinks die when you rename pages. Different failure modes, different maintenance.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23How to Use the Wayback Machine to Fix Dead Links
Find the right snapshot of a dead page (not the parking-page one), build a stable archive URL, and proactively archive fragile pages you cite.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23How to Find Broken Links on Any Website (3 Free Methods)
A browser extension for the pages in front of you, a crawler for whole sites, Search Console for the 404s Google found — how each works and when to use it.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23How to Fix Broken Links: Redirect, Replace, or Remove
The decision tree for every dead link — when to 301, when to fix at the source, how to use archived copies, and the mistakes (homepage redirects, chains) that make things worse.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23Do Broken Links Hurt SEO? What Google Actually Says
No penalties — but real costs: severed crawl paths, evaporated link equity, and visitors bouncing off error pages. What to fix first, and what to safely ignore.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23What Is a 404 Error? Meaning, Causes, and How to Fix It
What the code actually means, 404 vs 410 vs soft 404, the usual causes — and the right fix for each one. Plus the CERN room myth, debunked.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23HTTP Status Codes for Link Checking: 200, 301, 404, 500 Explained
Which codes are truly broken, which are fine, and which — 403, 429 — are bot-blocks in disguise that naive checkers mislabel. With a cheat-sheet table.
Read the guide → 2026-08-23Link Rot: Why 38% of the Web Has Already Disappeared
Pew found 38% of 2013's pages gone by 2023; half of Supreme Court citations are dead. Why links die, and how to keep your site off the casualty list.
Read the guide →Put the guides into practice
Broken Link Checker is a free Chrome extension that scans the page you're on and highlights every dead link — no signup, no server.