Part of SEO is maintaining good website hygiene - and not having any broken links on your website is one key maintenance task.

What is a broken link?

A Broken link is when you click on a link and you are directed to a page that no longer exists.  Hopefully the missing page has a redirect (the equivalent to a detour when driving) that gets you to the intended page.  Ideally all links on your site should go to the intended page without redirects.

How do I check for Broken Links?

There are two kinds of broken links to check for, those that are inside your site and those out in the world pointing to a non-existent page on your site.

Checking for local broken links

The quickest way is to use AHREF's free Broken Link Checker.  AHREFs has a large database of pages and links on the internet, the results are almost instant as it gives you an answer from pulling a report form tis database.  However this is not updated in real-time and recent repairs of broken links will not be reflected immediately in the database,

If you want the most accurate report you can use Brokenlinkcheck.com - you must wait as the tool crawls the entire site inspecting each link.

Checking for broken backlinks

Another key strategy is checking for Broken Back Links. It would be terrible for a high ranking site to be linking to a page on your site that no longer exists.  There is no free source for a good broken backlink report.  Torchlight tackles for clients on our SEO plans and Marketing Bundles.

References:

Backlinks that work 

Tool: AHREFs Broken Link check

SEO