How to use the Broken Links report

Video for this tutorial is coming soon.

In this report, we show all broken external links on a target website, subdomain (e.g., blog.domain.com), subfolder (e.g., domain.com/blog/) or URL.

Below are some actionable ways to use this report.

Find and fix broken external links

Broken links lead to poor user experience, so they’re worth fixing.

Enter your domain into Site Explorer and go to the Broken Links report.

Analyze the report and remove or replace any broken links.

Broken link building is a tactic where you:

Find a broken page with backlinks;
Create content on the same topic;
Reach out to those linking to the dead resource and ask them to link to you instead.

To find these opportunities, enter your domain in Site Explorer and go to the Broken Links report.

Skim the report and look for relevant broken pages.

For example, ahrefs.com links to a broken page on hootsuite.com.

Hit the caret next to the URL of the dead page.

Looks like there are 171 unique websites linking to the dead page.

If the topic is relevant to your site, you could create something on that topic, then ask those linking to the dead page to link to you instead.

For more opportunities, you can also analyze your competitors’ websites.

Want to learn more about broken link building? Check out this video tutorial:

Check out these guides on the Ahrefs blog: