A broken link is a hyperlink that leads to a non-existent destination—either an internal page on your own site or an external resource that's been moved, deleted, or misconfigured. When clicked, these links typically return HTTP error codes like 404 (Not Found), 410 (Gone), or sometimes 500-level server errors. They create dead ends that frustrate users and signal poor site maintenance to search engines. Broken links fall into two categories. Internal broken links point to pages within your own domain that no longer exist, often because you deleted content, restructured URLs, or migrated platforms without proper redirects. External broken links point to third-party sites that have removed content, changed their URL structure, or gone offline entirely. Both types damage user experience, but internal breaks are entirely within your control and should be your first priority to fix. From an SEO perspective, broken links waste crawl budget because Googlebot follows them to dead ends instead of discovering valuable content. They also dilute link equity—if you're linking to a 404 page, you're passing PageRank into a black hole. On the flip side, finding broken external links on authoritative sites creates link building opportunities. If a high-authority page links to a competitor's dead resource and you have similar content, you can reach out suggesting your page as a replacement. At Ottawa SEO, we run monthly broken link audits across our portfolio using Screaming Frog and Google Search Console. For sites with 500+ pages, you'll typically find 15-40 broken links per audit, mostly from content updates or external sites changing structure. Fix internal breaks with 301 redirects to the most relevant existing page. For external breaks, either remove the link, replace it with a current source, or use it as an outreach angle if the destination was a competitor. Most agencies charge $200-400 CAD for a one-time broken link cleanup, but it's straightforward enough to handle in-house with the right tools.