Fixing Broken Links on Your Accounting Firm Website

A broken link is a link that leads to a page that no longer exists, returning a 404 "Not Found" error. Every broken link on your accounting website represents a failure: a potential client who clicked and arrived at an error page, or a search engine crawler that wasted its visit on a dead end. Broken links accumulate quietly over time, and on websites with more than 20 or 30 pages they can become a significant problem without anyone noticing.

For accounting firms, the impact of broken links is both practical and technical. From a user experience perspective, a "Page Not Found" error on a professional services website looks careless. From an SEO perspective, broken links waste your crawl budget, dilute your internal linking structure, and can signal to Google that your site is not well maintained.

Two types of broken links: internal and external

It helps to distinguish between the two categories of broken links before addressing how to find and fix them, because the causes and solutions differ.

Internal broken links are links on your website that point to other pages on your own website that no longer exist. These are the more serious type for SEO. When a service page is deleted, renamed, or moved without a redirect being set up, every link that previously pointed to that page now leads to a 404 error. If that page had accumulated any ranking value, that value is now going nowhere.

Common causes of internal broken links on accounting websites include: redesigns or migrations where URLs changed, pages that were deleted but not redirected, blog posts or news articles that linked to old service pages, and navigation menus that were not updated when a page was removed.

External broken links are links on your website that point to pages on other websites that have since been taken down or moved. A common example is an accounting firm that wrote a blog post citing HMRC guidance using a specific URL that has since changed as HMRC reorganised its website. The page your readers reach when they click that link is an HMRC 404 error.

External broken links are less harmful to your SEO directly, but they do create a poor user experience and can reduce the credibility of your content if readers reach dead ends when trying to follow your citations.

How to find broken links

Three tools cover the range from free and simple to more comprehensive.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the most efficient tool for crawling a website and identifying broken links. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which is sufficient for most accounting firm websites. Download it from screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/, enter your domain, and run a crawl. When the crawl completes, click on the "Response Codes" tab and filter to show only 404 errors. Screaming Frog shows you both the broken URL and the page(s) on your site that contain links to it, making it straightforward to identify where each fix needs to be made.

Google Search Console Coverage report shows you broken pages from Google's perspective. Navigate to Search Console, select "Pages" (or "Coverage" depending on your version), and look at the "Not found (404)" category. These are pages that Google's crawler encountered a 404 error for when it followed a link to them. This report is valuable because it reflects what Googlebot actually encountered, but it may not be as comprehensive as a full Screaming Frog crawl for internal link discovery.

Ahrefs Site Audit (paid tool, but with a limited free version via Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) provides a comprehensive broken link report including both internal and external broken links. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free to access if you verify ownership of your domain and provides more detail than the free Screaming Frog tier.

For most accounting firms, Screaming Frog's free tier combined with Search Console's Coverage report provides everything you need.

What to do with internal broken links

Once you have a list of internal 404 errors, you have three options depending on the situation.

The original page moved or was renamed: set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL. A 301 redirect tells both browsers and search engines that the page has permanently moved. Visitors who click the old link are automatically sent to the new location. Any ranking value the old URL had accumulated is transferred to the new URL. This is the preferred option when the content still exists but the URL changed.

In WordPress, redirects are straightforward to set up using a plugin such as Redirection (free) or Rank Math (which includes redirect management). If you do not use WordPress, your developer can add redirects via your server configuration or .htaccess file.

The page was deleted and the content is genuinely gone: update all internal links that pointed to the deleted page so they point to the nearest relevant alternative. If you deleted a page about IR35 and have a related page about contractor tax, update the links to point there. Do not simply remove the links unless there is genuinely no relevant replacement content.

The page was deleted and there is no relevant alternative content: consider whether the content should be recreated. If a page that earned links from other websites or generated traffic has been deleted, restoring it may be worthwhile. If the page received no traffic and no links pointed to it externally, removing the internal links is acceptable.

What to do with external broken links

External broken links are simpler to resolve because you control the link itself, not the destination.

Identify the external resource the link was pointing to and decide between two options:

Replace with a working alternative: search for the current, correct URL for the resource you were referencing. HMRC guidance that has moved will usually be findable via the GOV.UK search. An industry report that has moved may be findable on the publisher's current website. Update the link to the new working URL.

Remove the link: if you cannot find a working alternative for the resource you were citing, remove the link from the text. Update the sentence so it reads naturally without the reference, or add a note that the source has since been updated.

Do not leave known external broken links in place. Beyond the user experience issue, pages with multiple external broken links can be interpreted as evidence of poor content maintenance.

The crawl budget argument

Crawl budget is the number of pages Google's crawler will visit on your site within a given time period. For large accounting websites with many pages, crawl budget becomes a meaningful consideration. Each 404 error page that Googlebot visits is a wasted crawl. Instead of indexing a useful new page or refreshing important existing content, Googlebot is spending its allocated visits on dead ends.

For smaller accounting websites of 20 to 50 pages, crawl budget is unlikely to be a significant concern. As your site grows and you publish more content covering tax topics, guides, and service pages, managing your crawl budget becomes more relevant.

The practical takeaway is that fixing broken links is not just about fixing immediate user experience problems. It is also about ensuring that when Google allocates crawling time to your site, it is reaching pages that serve your SEO goals.

Setting up a monitoring process

Broken links are not a one-time problem. New ones are created whenever you delete or move a page, whenever an external website you link to removes or moves a page, or whenever a third-party resource you embed changes its URL structure.

A monthly crawl with Screaming Frog takes ten to twenty minutes for a typical accounting firm website and catches new broken links before they accumulate. Add a calendar reminder for the first Monday of each month to run the crawl and review the results.

In Search Console, broken pages identified in the Coverage report generate data continuously. Check the Coverage report when you log into Search Console (which should be at least monthly) and look for new 404 entries.

If you make structural changes to your site, such as changing your URL structure, deleting a section, or migrating platforms, run a crawl immediately after the change to catch any broken links created in the process. These are the scenarios most likely to generate many broken links simultaneously.

When to involve your developer

For most external broken link fixes, you can make the changes yourself within your CMS: edit the relevant page and update the link. For internal 404 errors, you may be able to fix some by updating links within your CMS, but if the fix requires setting up 301 redirects, you will need either a plugin (in WordPress) or developer involvement (on custom-built sites).

If you have identified a significant number of broken links, say more than 20 internal 404 errors, brief your developer with the full list exported from Screaming Frog. Include the broken URL, the pages that link to it, and the destination you want each redirect to point to. This structured brief allows the work to be completed efficiently in a single session.

Key takeaways

• Broken links (404 errors) harm user experience and waste crawl budget, with internal broken links being more SEO-significant than external broken links.
• Screaming Frog's free version crawls up to 500 URLs and identifies both broken URLs and the pages on your site that link to them.
• The Google Search Console Coverage report shows pages Google found as 404 errors when crawling your site.
• For internal broken links where the page has moved, a 301 redirect is the correct fix and transfers ranking value to the new URL.
• For external broken links, update the link to a working alternative or remove it from the content.
• Monthly crawls catch new broken links before they accumulate; run an immediate crawl after any structural changes to your site.

Frequently asked questions

How many broken links are too many?

There is no specific threshold, but any known broken link should be fixed as a matter of maintenance. On a site with 50+ pages, finding five to ten broken links in a quarterly crawl is not unusual and is manageable in a short session. Discovering 50 or more broken links suggests that pages have been deleted or moved without proper redirect management, which should be addressed systematically.

What is the difference between a 404 error and a 301 redirect?

A 404 error means the requested page does not exist; the server returns this code and usually displays a "Not Found" page. A 301 redirect means the page has permanently moved; the server returns this code along with the new URL, and browsers and search engines automatically follow the redirect to the new location. When you fix an internal broken link by setting a redirect, you turn a 404 into a 301.

Do broken links from other websites to my pages affect me?

Yes, if those external sites link to a page that you have deleted or moved without setting up a redirect. Any incoming links (called backlinks) from other sites represent SEO value. If you delete the page those links point to, that value is lost. Set up 301 redirects for any pages that had external backlinks before deleting them. Use Google Search Console's Links report to see which of your pages have external links pointing to them.

Can I use the free version of Screaming Frog for an accounting website?

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which covers most accounting firm websites comfortably. If your site has more than 500 pages, you will need to purchase a licence (approximately £209 per year) or use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools as an alternative. For a typical five to ten page practice website with a blog, the free version is more than adequate.

Should I fix external broken links myself or ask my developer?

External broken link fixes are usually straightforward to do yourself: log into your CMS, edit the page, update the link or remove it, and save. No technical knowledge is required. Internal broken links that require 301 redirects may need developer involvement unless you use a redirect plugin in WordPress.