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Most law firm websites look fine on the surface. Clean homepage. Service pages. Maybe a blog post or two about car accidents or insurance claims.

But behind the scenes?

Broken internal links are quietly sabotaging your rankings, your site authority, and your user experience.

And the worst part? Google won’t warn you.

Needless to say, this is bad for your website’s SEO.

An internal link is any link on your website that points to another page on your site.

A broken internal link is one that leads nowhere—usually a 404 error or a page that was deleted or renamed without updating the link.

It’s like giving Google and your visitors a map with dead ends.

Will Google Penalize You for Broken Links?

Google won’t penalize you for broken links. At least, not directly.

Google doesn’t hand out penalties just because you’ve got a few broken links. But it’s not that simple either.

Here’s what really happens:

Googlebot Wastes Crawl Budget

Every time Google’s crawler hits a broken link, that’s time and resources wasted.

Especially for larger websites, this means fewer important pages get discovered or indexed.

Internal Authority Gets Lost

Internal links are how your site passes PageRank from one page to another. Broken links break that flow.

That means your pillar pages lose power and your cluster pages can’t support each other.

User Experience Tanks

Clicking a dead link sucks.

If a visitor lands on a broken link when they’re researching how to file a car accident claim or what to do after a truck crash, guess what?

They bounce. Google sees that.

And if it happens often enough, your rankings can slip.

Your Site Looks Neglected

In competitive markets—like personal injury law—broken links are a signal of poor maintenance.

That reflects badly on your brand and can weaken your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) signals.

How Much Damage Can Broken Links Really Do?

Let me be real for a sec.

One or two broken links buried deep in your blog won’t destroy your SEO.

But when you scale that across:

  • Dozens of blog posts
  • Service pages that have changed URLs
  • A restructured site with outdated links
  • Navigation menus that point to retired pages

Suddenly, you’re looking at:

  • Lost crawl efficiency
  • Thinner internal link equity
  • Disconnected content clusters
  • Confused users
  • Lower engagement
  • And yes… lower rankings

It adds up.

Quietly. Systematically. And most site owners have no clue.

How to Find and Fix Broken Internal Links

Here’s your no-BS checklist:

Step 1: Crawl Your Site

Use a tool like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs Site Audit.

Look specifically for:

  • 404 errors
  • Redirect chains
  • Orphaned pages

Step 2: Replace or Remove

For every broken internal link:

  • If the content still exists under a new URL, update the link.
  • If the content was intentionally removed, link to something else relevant—or remove the link entirely.
  • Avoid linking through 301 redirects when you can. Go direct.

Step 3: Set Up Monitoring

Broken links will creep back in. It’s inevitable.

Set monthly or quarterly audits as part of your technical SEO hygiene process.

Common Causes of Broken Internal Links

Most broken links aren’t caused by laziness—they’re caused by routine updates that aren’t followed through all the way.

Here are the most common reasons internal links break on law firm websites:

  • You changed a URL slug without updating the old links (e.g., changing /car-accident to /houston-car-accident-lawyer).
  • You deleted a blog post or service page without redirecting it or removing links to it.
  • Your developer changed your permalink structure, and you didn’t audit internal links afterward.
  • You migrated your site to a new CMS or platform, and the new site architecture didn’t match the old one.
  • You renamed or moved a folder, breaking relative URLs.
  • You manually typed a link and missed a character or added an extra slash.

None of these are “SEO sins”—they’re normal.

But if you don’t stay on top of them, your internal architecture starts to rot.

How to Prioritize Which Broken Links to Fix First

If your site audit uncovers several dozen (or hundreds) of broken internal links, don’t panic. Not all of them matter equally.

Here’s how to triage your fix list for maximum SEO impact:

  1. Fix broken links on high-traffic pages
    These affect the most users and send the strongest signals to Google.
  2. Fix broken links in menus, footers, and navigation
    These appear site-wide and harm both crawlability and trust.
  3. Fix broken links to pages that still exist under a different URL
    Easy win—just update the link to point to the new location.
  4. Fix broken links from high-authority pages
    If your top-performing blog post is linking to dead content, you’re leaking link equity.
  5. Then move on to lower-traffic, deep-content links
    These are still worth fixing—but they’re not as urgent.

This is how you turn a broken-link audit from overwhelming into strategic.

Fix the right links first, and your SEO recovery starts compounding faster.

Want to Kill a Page? Use 410, Not 404

If you’re removing a page on purpose—because it’s outdated, irrelevant, or part of a content cleanup—don’t just let it sit as a 404 error.

Use a 410 Gone status code instead.

Why?

  • 404 = “This might be temporary.”
    Google may keep trying to recrawl the page for weeks or even months, wasting crawl budget.
  • 410 = “This is gone for good.”
    It tells search engines clearly and immediately: “Stop looking for this. It’s dead.”

When to use 410

  • You’re permanently deleting a page (e.g., old practice area, duplicate content).
  • You don’t want to redirect the URL anywhere else.
  • You want Google to deindex it faster.
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Pro Tip: If you have internal links pointing to a now-deleted page, remove or update them too. Don’t leave internal links pointing to 410s.

If you run a personal injury law firm—or you’re marketing one—here’s why this matters even more:

  • Legal content is YMYL (Your Money or Your Life). Google holds it to a higher standard.
  • One bad user experience could cost you a potential million-dollar case.
  • Broken links on high-stakes pages (car accidents, wrongful death, truck crashes) reduce trust and tank authority.

In short: Broken links make your firm look careless.

And careless doesn’t win cases.

Bottom Line

Broken internal links won’t get you penalized. But they will quietly kill your SEO over time.

Fixing them is one of the easiest, fastest ways to clean up your technical profile and boost rankings.

You don’t need a giant SEO budget.

You just need someone who knows how to spot problems before they cost you traffic, leads, and revenue.

Need a Technical SEO Cleanup?

If your law firm’s site hasn’t had a link audit in the last 6 months, there are probably dozens of broken links dragging your rankings down right now.

At BetterCallSpencer.com, I help personal injury law firms spot hidden SEO problems—then fix them fast.

📞 Book a free consultation and let’s get your site back in fighting shape.

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