A broken link returns a 404 or similar error because the destination page no longer exists, moved, or the URL is mistyped. You don't open it—you diagnose why it broke and decide on a fix based on who controls the destination. If you own the site receiving the broken link, log into your CMS or server and check if the page was deleted or renamed. If it was deleted but still valuable, republish it at the same URL. If it moved, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new location so link equity transfers and visitors land somewhere useful. If the page is gone for good and irrelevant, a 410 status is cleaner than leaving a 404, but most people just leave the 404 or redirect to a relevant parent page. If you're doing outreach and found a broken link on someone else's site pointing to a dead resource, that's a link building opportunity. Find the original content using archive.org, create a better replacement on your site, then email the site owner with a polite heads-up that their link is broken and offer your page as a substitute. Mention the specific URL and anchor text so they can find it fast. Conversion rate on broken link building sits around 5–8% in our experience—low, but the links you do get are editorial and contextual. If you're just trying to see what used to be at a broken URL, paste it into the Wayback Machine. You'll often find snapshots from months or years ago. This works for competitive research, recovering lost content ideas, or verifying that a domain used to host something relevant before you try to acquire an expired domain. Common mistake: assuming every broken external link on your site hurts SEO. It doesn't directly harm rankings, but too many create a poor user experience and waste crawl budget on large sites. Run a quarterly scan with Screaming Frog or Ahrefs Site Audit, then either fix, redirect, or remove the broken outbound links. At Ottawa SEO, we prioritize fixing broken internal links first since those directly affect crawlability and PageRank flow, then handle high-authority external ones that disappoint users.