Prevent Link Erosion. Restore your site’s trust, clicks and revenue.
Stop link rot from quietly eating away your hard-earned authority, traffic and conversions.
Broken links and messy redirect chains will seriously damage your website if left unchecked, but how much do you know about the silent authority leak on your site?
Sure, you can roughly guess which pages are losing link juice, and try to improve site speed with a simple plugin or two. But without proper crawling software and detailed link-mapping data, most of your efforts will be wasted on guesswork.
When we crawl your site at EcoSEO, we locate every dead link, redirect loop, and other strange cul-de-sacs your site has picked up over the years.
We then do what needs to be done to fix the flow, using SEO-friendly redirects to create a tidy, logical path that keeps your authority consolidated and your users moving in the right direction.
In a recent analysis of the web, Ahrefs found that about two-thirds of websites are leaking link equity because of broken links. It’s a bigger problem than most people realise, but thankfully it’s also very easy to fix.
Fixing those issues will leave you with a faster, more user-friendly site structure that’s easier for Google to understand, and much better at holding onto the authority you’ve already earned.
EcoSEO Broken Links & Redirect Chain Fix Solutions: What's Included
Redirect Chain Forensics
Redirect chains are a hidden house of horrors that usually go unaddressed until they break. By then, you’ve already lost equity at each unnecessary hop and the clean up is rarely fun. We’re crawling all redirects, analyzing where authority is being lost and then pruning everything down to a single, relevant 301. Sometimes this means consolidating a handful of pages that should live together under a single URL. Other times, it’s simply a matter of taking out some middlemen. The result is always the same, though: giving Google and your users the shortest, smartest path to where they want to be.
Backlink Equity Recovery
Broken backlinks from other sites are one of the largest undiscovered money pits in SEO. If someone links to a page on your site and that page ceases to exist, you may lose all that authority in a way that’s completely invisible to brands. Our forensic backlink tools identify those orphaned backlinks and we work to recover them by rebuilding or redirecting the URLs to strong, relevant pages. We’re not just fixing errors, we’re reclaiming the authority you already built, but unwittingly left on the table.
Content Replacement & Relevance Mapping
Redirects should never feel arbitrary. Pointing pages to your homepage may feel easy, but it does far more harm than good in the long run. Instead, we map keywords intent, content depth and topical relevance so that the redirect best mirrors the target page. We even use a shortlist of error page copy when it’s the most logical destination. The end result is redirects that feel purposeful, so rankings are stable and end users rarely feel lost. Plus, using redirects in this way actually reinforces topical themes across your site.
Implementation Support
This only works, of course, if the implementation isn’t a complete nightmare. So we provide redirect maps in a format that developers can actually use, along with tested and documented server rules for Apache, Nginx, Cloudflare, and CMS specific plugins where needed. And we test everything — not in the half-assed kind of way that leaves major issues undetected, but in the crawl logs plus Search Console double-check kind of way. We don’t say a project is finished until every redirect is behaving exactly as it should.
Continuous Monitoring & Reporting
Things break over time. They just do. So we continue to monitor link health after the initial fixes are made. Any broken links, redirect loops or crawl anomalies are flagged in real time. You’ll receive a monthly link health snapshot that shows what’s been fixed, what’s changed, and how much backlink value was recovered. It’s a simple way to keep your site clean, stable and technically optimized over the long term.
CUSTOMERS REVIEWS
"Thank you for fixing all the errors on my site. The desinger told us last week that the site has almost zero 404 errors and there no more redirect loops. You guys are great!” –
Vicky Sonders., Cape Town Builders Association
Fix Broken Links & Redirect Chains – Restore Flow & SEO Authority to Your Site
More common than you might think - One study found that over 21% of sites have wasted crawl budget on redundant redirects and another 8% were pointing directly to dead ends. Often those dreaded 4XX errors we’ve all been guilty of creating at one point or another.
The impact of a single broken link or sloppy redirect chain can seem negligible. Nearly inconsequential. It’s when they start to accumulate that you really begin to lose SEO value, create a disconnect between crawlers & users and impede the natural flow of your site.
At EcoSEO, we like to view it from both a technical (needs to be exact) and strategic (dictates where it SHOULD point) lens.
When those two overlap is when you no longer just mitigate error — you regain lost authority that has been siphoning away for months, even years.
It could be outdated URLs, old removed pages you thought long forgotten, or redirect loops that have slowly crept up over time.
The cause doesn’t matter because we clean it up, restructure so it’s seamless, and rebuild so every click (person or Google bot) lands exactly where it should.
4.7/5
Google Rating
4.8/5
Trust Pilot
Repairing Broken Links & Redirect Chains with EcoSEO
Repairing broken links and redirect chains at EcoSEO is not just a “spray and pray” exercise. What we really do is return the health to the entire ecosystem of your site (the things users notice, even if they can’t always articulate why a site “just feels” better). We dig a lot deeper than “surface scrapes” and “check this, fix that” checklists. We focus on the technical diagnostics, crawl analysis, backlink forensics… the “dirty work” that uncovers where your traffic and authority is leaking away. We then map out the architecture of what is broken and we reinforce your internal structure to better please the Googlebots, reduce user frustration, and make your rankings that much more resilient.
Technical SEO Forensics Experts
We’ve discovered over the years that most of these hidden issues at a site don’t show up in your average 10-minute audit you see all over the internet. Our experts investigate the things you rarely (if ever) see on the surface: dangling architecture from old redesigns, messy migrations, orphaned pages that were removed without redirects and so on. We go beyond identifying bad or broken links to understanding why they broke in the first place. This is often the key to turning a temporary solution into a permanent fix.
Our Services Are Built on Data
Every recommendation we make, every repair that we suggest, is backed by data: crawl logs, browsing session history, analytics trends, backlink profiles — all of it. We don’t rely on guesswork, or make recommendations based on “industry best practices.” We prioritize fixes based on impact vs. effort, as well as how much authority, relevance, and ranking potential each page has. The result of this is technical improvements that will move the needle, instead of busy-work that merely looks good on paper.
Preserving the Link Equity, End-to-End
There is surprisingly a lot of link equity that leaks away in broken links and sloppy redirects. All of that value chipped away from your brand’s authority. So we focus on keeping that equity where it belongs: inside of your site. The goal is simple: your most authoritative pages should remain as such, and weaker pages should not be hemorrhaging value left and right. Nothing your brand has earned, no amount of value you have built, should be leaking away.
UX-First Results
Technical SEO is not always the most visible thing on the surface, from a user perspective, but that does not mean the user should feel it. When we clean up the technical link structure, we also seek to ensure the experience is second nature to the user — fewer “dead ends,” a more streamlined navigation, and an overall sense of “this site just works.” The benefit tends to be higher engagement, longer time on site, more conversions, etc. The good stuff.
Transparent Auditing & Reporting
You will always know exactly what we are doing, and why we are doing it. Every single repair we make, every issue we discover, every result achieved will be clearly outlined. We do not hide behind SEO jargon or generic progress reports. If you can see the impact then you can trust the process, and that is how long-term, working relationships are formed.
A Proactive Maintenance Mindset
A lot of SEO agencies will repair your broken links and consider the job done. We like to think a step ahead. Websites and pages are not static, they change all the time, they are added, deleted, and moved around. Our monitoring ensures your link structure remains strong as your site grows. More like an “ongoing improvement cycle” and less like “maintenance” (which is exactly the point).
ScentForMe | Online Perfume shop sees 302% Surge in Organic Search Traffic
Riverstone Animal Care | Vet Clinic Sees 6.5% Boost in Organic Search Traffic
Potgieter and Willemse Attorneys | 651% Increase in Client Inquiries
Photography To Remember | 48 Top 1-3 positioned keywords within 6 Months of SEO.
PARRIS | EcoSEO Helped a Skincare Brand Achieve 295% More Organic Traffic
EcoSEO's 6-step broken link & redirect chain cleanup process
Fixing 404s, redirects, and broken links is rarely a trivial, box-ticking process. Instead, the whole point is to recover how authority flows, to make sure user journeys stay intact, and to allow search engines to efficiently crawl and index every page on the site.
- Phase 1. In-Depth Link Health Audit & URL HarvestingOur broken links cleanup process always begins with a comprehensive crawl of the site in question (using tools like Screaming Frog), a triage of reported errors in Search Console, and sometimes an analysis of server logs when something “doesn’t add up”. Every potential 4xx error, every redirect chain, every suspect URL is logged and analyzed. Some are more important than others, so we rank every issue according to how much link equity is being lost and how much traffic may be at stake.
- Phase 2. Root Cause Analysis of Each Broken LinkA broken link isn’t just a broken link. Broken links always have an origin story: a discontinued product, an internal URL copied wrong by an editor half a year ago, an external website that updated its structure without saying a word, etc. We categorize every issue so we can identify the proper solution: does a redirect fix the problem or not? Does the page need to return, or should we create a new one to replace it? Etc. It’s the only way to fully resolve every issue and prevent users or Google from ever reaching dead ends.
- Phase 3. Mapping & Rectifying Redirect ChainsIn most cases, there isn’t one redirect per page but rather a number of them. It’s not uncommon to see two, three or even four redirects before the final page fully loads with just one click. We’ll crawl and map these redirect chains by hand and reconstruct them, with one series of unnecessary hops replaced by one single 301. It’s an immediate improvement: Googlebot will be able to crawl the site more efficiently and users will have the benefit of shorter loading times, without losing any authority.
- Phase 4. Redirecting or Restoring Valuable 404 PagesWhile some 404 pages are obviously not worth rescuing, others might still have a future. When a formerly live page is getting decent referral traffic, especially with other websites still linking to it, that’s link equity that would be silently wasted by deleting that page. Solution? Redirect or restore the URL in question to the most relevant or up-to-date page on the site, usually just a simple move that can sometimes fully restore a lost page’s authority and give it a new lease of life.
- Phase 5. Updating Internal Links & On-Page ReferencesOnce the major errors have been cleaned up, we perform another crawl of all internal links to detect and correct any lingering issues, and update any internal link (or on-page reference) still pointing at a non-existent URL (or at the URL where the page used to be) to now point at its final destination after the cleanup. It’s the kind of detail that prevents users from stumbling across any future broken links, and ensures a continued healthy flow of internal equity by tidying up all the wires behind the walls for everything to keep running smoothly.
- Phase 6. Final Validation & Ongoing GSC MonitoringAfter all has been implemented, we run one final round of crawling and error checking to make sure that everything has indeed been resolved, no more 4xx errors, and no redirect chains under the carpet. We also keep a close eye on Google Search Console for a few weeks to make sure that no new issue shows up and you’ll get full documentation of all the work done and “official” clearance of errors by Google.
FAQ — Broken Links & Redirect Chains
Are redirects bad for SEO?
Not really. Redirects are part of the plumbing of the web, and a simple 301 is nothing to lose sleep over. Link equity loss and crawler efficiency only become issues when a redirect chain gets multiple hops, redirects loop back on themselves, or a series of temporary redirects are left in place of a single permanent one. Crawling usually slows way down too, almost like the site is stuck in molasses.
Can you guarantee rankings will improve?
I wish, but no. Any SEO that will guarantee a certain ranking position is full of it. What we can promise is that once those issues are resolved, you’re no longer leaking authority, all the value of your existing links points where it should, and it’s easy for search engines to navigate your site. With all those factors working together, the content is naturally positioned to move up.
Will fixing broken backlinks mean contacting other sites?
Sometimes, yes. If there is a high-value external link pointing to a page with a broken or outdated URL, we’ll usually reach out and ask that it be corrected. It’s a small favor to request, but the results can be significant. The majority of the time, we will redirect a link correctly or reconstruct a page so you don’t lose any traffic.
I want to sign up. Who do I contact?
That’s great news. Hit up the Contact Us button above and send us a quick email. We’ll have one of our team get back to you as soon as possible.
What if a page was intentionally removed?
It happens all the time. The first thing we do is establish the reason for the removal. If the page already served its purpose and is not expected to be needed in the future, we’ll mark it accordingly (sometimes that’s a 410, sometimes it’s a 301 to an appropriate alternative). But if we can verify that the page had value (and that’s more often than you might expect), we will generally recommend it be restored in some fashion.
How do you decide which broken link to fix first?
For the most part it comes down to potential impact. The amount of lost traffic, authority of the linking site, and relevance of the link in the overall user experience are all factors. A single valuable link from a highly respected industry site easily trumps many dozens of errors that have little or no value.
Do you handle JavaScript link problems and infinite-scroll traps?
Yes — those are part of our routine. We crawl using a fully-rendered JavaScript view, which exposes links that a crawler with a more limited JavaScript engine is not going to find at all.
Do you offer other technical SEO Services?
Yes we do. We provide various Technical SEO Services. This include Site Speed & Performance Optimisation, Site Architecture & Internal Linking, HTTPS & Website Security, Core Web Vitals Optimization, Crawlability & Indexation, Mobile Optimization, Canonicalization & Duplicate Content removal, Index Bloat & Crawl Budget Optimization, Broken links & Redirect Fixes and Structured Data & Schema Markup Services.