How to use the Broken backlinks report

The Broken backlinks report shows you the referring pages that link to 404 pages on your target website, URL, or subsection along with their anchor and surrounding text.

Here are some actionable use cases for this report.

Find and fix broken external links

The backlinks that lead to 404 pages on your target website are a waste of “link equity”. They could instead be passing value and authority to live relevant pages on your website, increasing their chances to rank.

Enter your website to find them.

The backlinks from external websites (external links) reside under the Referring page column (1) and 404 pages (broken pages) reside under the Anchor and target URL column (2).

Once found, you can either restore them or use redirects to other relevant pages of your website.

Keep learning

Check out this video on how to preserve link equity.