How to Fix 404 Errors: A Step-by-Step Guide

Published 15 April 2026

A 404 error means a visitor (or a search engine crawler) asked for a page that doesn't exist. Every website accumulates them over time — pages get deleted, URLs get renamed, external links rot away, and the occasional typo slips into a blog post. The question isn't whether you have broken links. It's how you handle them.

This guide walks through the four options you have for fixing a 404, when each one is the right choice, and how to decide which broken links to tackle first when you've got a list of them.

Step 1: Find Every Broken Link

Before you can fix anything, you need a complete list. Don't rely on visitor reports — most people who hit a dead link just leave without telling you. Instead, scan your site with a tool that checks every link on every page.

Broken Link Finder will crawl a page, follow every link it finds, and report which ones return 404s, redirects, timeouts, or other errors. Run it against your most important pages first: your homepage, your top-performing content, your pricing or product pages, and anywhere you know has been getting good inbound links.

For each broken link you find, note down two things: the source URL (the page with the broken link) and the target URL (the dead destination). You'll need both when you decide how to fix it.

Step 2: Prioritise Which Ones to Fix First

On a site of any size, you might find dozens or even hundreds of 404s. Fixing all of them at once isn't always practical, so prioritise ruthlessly. Here's the order we recommend:

Broken links on high-traffic pages. A dead link on your homepage or a popular article affects far more visitors than one buried on a tag archive page.
Broken links pointing to your own content. If an internal link is broken, you almost certainly have the power to fix it. External broken links are often out of your control.
Broken links that Google knows about. Check Google Search Console's "Not found (404)" report. Any URL in that list is costing you crawl budget.
Broken links with inbound backlinks. If another site has linked to a 404 on your site, you're wasting link equity. These are high-value fixes.
Everything else. Fix in whatever order makes sense, and don't beat yourself up about the long tail.

Step 3: Pick One of the Four Fix Options

For each broken link, you've got four choices. Work through them in order — the earlier options preserve more SEO value.

Option 1: Update the Link (Best)

If you still have the destination content, just point the link at the correct URL. This is the cleanest fix — no redirects, no lost link equity, no server-side rules to maintain. It's also the only option that works cleanly for external links (where you can't control the destination server).

Example: a blog post links to /services/seo-audit, but you renamed that page to /services/technical-seo-audit. Edit the blog post and update the link. Done.

Option 2: Set Up a 301 Redirect

If the content has genuinely moved to a new URL and you can't (or don't want to) hunt down every link that points at the old location, set up a permanent (301) redirect from the old URL to the new one. Search engines treat 301s as "this page has moved, please update your index," and they pass most of the link equity through to the new URL.

Avoid chaining redirects. If A → B and B → C, update A to point directly at C. Each hop in a redirect chain loses a small amount of link equity and adds latency for your visitors.

Option 3: Create a Replacement Page

Sometimes the old content is gone but there's something similar you could offer instead. If a 404 is getting significant traffic or has valuable backlinks, it can be worth writing a new page to fill the gap — then redirecting the old URL to the new content. This is particularly useful for product pages that have been retired but still attract search traffic.

Option 4: Let It 404 (Sometimes Correct)

Not every 404 needs fixing. If a URL never had inbound links, never appeared in search results, and was only reachable through a broken internal link that you've already removed, it's perfectly fine to leave it as a 404. Google is smart enough to drop dead URLs from its index eventually, and a 404 is an honest answer — "this doesn't exist" — which is better than redirecting visitors somewhere they didn't ask for.

The one thing you should do for legitimate 404s is serve a helpful error page. Include a search box, links to your most popular content, and a clear apology. A well-designed 404 page turns a dead end into a starting point.

Real Examples from Recent Audits

Abstract advice is hard to apply. Here are five concrete 404 patterns we've fixed for clients in the last year, with the decision we made each time and why.

The renamed product line

A client renamed their flagship product from "AutoSync Pro" to "Sync Studio" during a brand refresh. The old URL /products/autosync-pro/ started 404ing the moment the new page went live. The fix: a 301 redirect from /products/autosync-pro/ to /products/sync-studio/. This preserved every existing backlink (and there were dozens — that page had been live for four years). Within a fortnight, Search Console reported the redirect target was being indexed for the same queries the old URL used to rank for.

Lesson: when you rename a single page, always 301 the old URL to the new one. It takes thirty seconds and saves years of accumulated link equity.

The retired blog category

A site had a "/news/" category with about 60 old posts that hadn't been updated in three years. We retired the category and removed it from navigation. The category URL itself started 404ing. Decision: rather than redirect /news/ to the homepage (a soft 404 anti-pattern), we kept the individual post URLs live but removed the category landing page. Each post still resolves at its original URL; only the category index 404s. Since no external site linked to the category index, the 404 has zero practical impact.

Lesson: not every 404 needs fixing. If a URL never received external traffic or backlinks, an honest 404 is fine. Don't redirect to the homepage to "tidy up" — that's worse for SEO than the original 404.

The CMS migration disaster

A client migrated from WordPress to a custom CMS. The new system used different URL slugs. About 200 internal links to the old URLs broke overnight, plus an unknown number of external backlinks. The fix: we exported every URL from the old WordPress install, mapped each to its closest new URL, and built a 301-redirect map at the web server level. The whole thing took a day, and pre-migration rankings were retained in full.

Lesson: every CMS or domain migration needs a redirect map drafted before launch. Don't deploy and then figure out what broke — the broken state will be live, indexed, and damaging traffic the whole time.

The expired event page

A site had landing pages for past events: /events/spring-conference-2023/, /events/autumn-conference-2023/, and so on. New ones replace old ones every year. The team wanted to redirect each expired event page to "the latest event." We pushed back: the expired pages still got search traffic (people researching past events), and a redirect to the next event would feel like bait-and-switch. The fix: keep each past event page live, add an "Event has ended — view this year's event" banner at the top, and link to the current event. Same outcome from the visitor's perspective, no soft 404 risk.

Lesson: a redirect to a different (but related) page can confuse search engines and visitors. Sometimes keeping the page live with updated context is better than redirecting.

The typo no one noticed

The most common cause of 404s on small business sites turns out to be the most boring one: typos. A blog post links to /services/web-deisgn/ instead of /services/web-design/. The link was added during the original post draft, never tested, and has been 404ing for two years. The fix is literally a one-character edit.

Lesson: most broken-link audits will find typos. Don't be embarrassed; fix them and move on. A scan run five minutes after publishing would have caught this on day one.

Step 4: Prevent Future 404s

Fixing the broken links you have today is only half the job. The other half is stopping new ones from appearing:

Redirect when you rename. Every time you change a URL, set up a 301 from the old one. Make this a habit before you click publish.
Check links in old content when you update it. When you refresh a blog post from last year, run the old version through Broken Link Finder first. External links are the usual culprits.
Schedule regular scans. Monthly for small sites, weekly for large ones. A proper maintenance routine catches link rot before it becomes a problem.
Use stable URL structures. URLs should reflect content, not implementation. A URL tied to a product SKU is more stable than one tied to a CMS category ID.