Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Cafe Website, Step by Step
You ran a link checker, or a customer messaged that the order button leads nowhere, and now you have a list of red links: old menu PDFs, a deleted event page, an Instagram address that changed. You are not sure which ones actually matter, and you are worried that deleting a page will hurt your search results. Short answer: a broken link is a small fix with a clear order of priority, and most broken links do not need a redirect at all, they simply need the link changed or removed.
This piece walks through finding broken links with a free checker and with Search Console's page indexing report, deciding for each one whether to update, redirect or remove it, and setting the redirect in your builder in a few clicks when one is actually warranted. Two worked cases run through it start to finish: a removed seasonal menu page that had real inbound links, and a footer link to a partner site that closed.
The Order of Triage
Fix the links customers use first: menu, hours, order, directions. These are the links standing directly between a visitor and a visit or a purchase, and a broken one here causes immediate, real friction, whether or not it has any effect on search performance at all.
After that, fix internal links, links from one page on your own site to another. These matter for navigation and for helping visitors and search engines understand how your site fits together, but they are lower urgency than the customer facing links above since a visitor usually has other ways to find what they need.
External links, links pointing off your site to somewhere else, come last. A dead link to a partner's old site or a news article that has moved is a real thing worth fixing eventually, but it rarely affects a visitor's ability to do what they came to your site to do, order, check hours, find directions.
Finding Broken Links With a Free Checker
A free link checker crawls your site's pages and reports which links return an error when followed. Two commonly used, free tools for this are Screaming Frog, which offers a free crawl limit generously sized for a small cafe site, and the Google Search Console page indexing report covered in the next section, which shows a different, complementary view of the same underlying problem.
Neither tool is being endorsed here over any other; they are named as concrete, workable examples of the kind of tool that does this job for a small site, not as a recommendation over every alternative. Running a checker against a five page test site with a handful of intentionally broken links, one internal, one external, one PDF, is a useful way to see firsthand what a given tool catches and what it misses before relying on it for a real site.
It is worth knowing plainly that no free crawler catches everything. A link that works when crawled but fails intermittently, or a link hidden behind a script the crawler does not execute, can slip past a basic tool. This is not a reason to distrust the tool entirely, it is a reason to treat its output as a strong starting list, not a guaranteed complete one.
Using Search Console's Page Indexing Report
Search Console's Pages report, sometimes called the indexing report, shows a separate and valuable view: which of your pages Google itself has tried to crawl and found returning a not found status, filed under Not found (404), and a related, less obvious category called Soft 404.
This report is worth checking specifically because it reflects what Google has encountered, not just what a crawler run today happens to find. A page that broke months ago and has been sitting as a dead link the whole time may show up clearly here even if a fresh crawl today only catches the current state of things.
To use it, open Search Console for your site, go to the Pages section under Indexing, and look specifically at the Not found (404) and Soft 404 categories. Each entry lists a specific URL Google tried and could not successfully index, giving a second, independent list to compare against whatever a free crawler already turned up.
What Soft 404 Actually Means
A soft 404 is a specific and common surprise worth understanding on its own. It describes a page that displays something like a not found message to a human visitor, but technically returns a normal, successful status code to any system checking it, rather than the actual not found status that tells search engines and tools the page is genuinely gone.
The practical effect is that a soft 404 page can sit quietly in search results or get treated inconsistently by tools, since from a strictly technical standpoint it looks like a working page even though a visitor lands on it and sees nothing useful. This tends to happen when a builder's own generic not found message is displayed without the underlying page being configured to report the correct status.
Recognizing a soft 404 matters because the fix is different from a normal broken link. Rather than simply updating or removing a link that points somewhere dead, the underlying page itself needs to be configured to return the correct not found status, or replaced with content that exists, so tools and search engines can treat it accurately instead of being quietly misled about whether the page is real.
Deciding: Update, Redirect, or Remove
For each broken link found, the decision comes down to three options, and most links resolve cleanly to one of the first two without needing a redirect at all. Update the link when the destination still exists but has simply moved, a menu PDF renamed, a page moved to a new URL within your own site; this is often the simplest fix, just pointing the existing link at the correct current location.
Remove the link when the destination is genuinely gone and nothing needs to replace it, an event that already happened, a partner business that closed, a menu item discontinued with no successor page. Deleting the link entirely, rather than leaving it pointing at nothing, is usually the cleanest option here.
Redirect only when the old page itself had real visitors or real inbound links pointing to it, meaning people or other sites are still actively trying to reach that specific URL. A redirect sends anyone still using the old link automatically to a current, relevant page instead of a dead end. Most broken links on a small cafe site do not meet this bar; they are simply links that need to be changed or removed, not pages that need a redirect set up behind them.
Setting a Redirect in Your Builder
When a redirect is warranted, each major builder handles it through its own settings, usually under a URL redirect or SEO tools section rather than the page editor itself. Wix, Squarespace and Shopify each provide a dedicated redirect manager where you enter the old path and the new destination, and the platform handles serving the correct redirect response automatically once saved.
After setting a redirect, it is worth checking that it works rather than assuming it does, by visiting the old URL directly in a browser and confirming it lands on the intended new page rather than an error. This check takes under a minute and catches the occasional typo in the old or new path that would otherwise leave the redirect silently non functional.
A redirect is meant to be a bridge for traffic and links that already exist pointing at an old URL, not a permanent structural feature of a site. Once a redirect has been in place long enough that any broken external links have had a chance to be found and corrected at their source, over a matter of months, it can generally stay in place indefinitely without needing further attention, since most builders do not require ongoing maintenance for a working redirect once set.
Two Worked Cases
Case one: a shop removed its seasonal fall menu page once the season ended, without realizing a food blog had linked directly to that specific page months earlier. A visitor following that blog's link now hits a dead page. Since this page had a real, identifiable inbound link from another site actively still active, this is the case where a redirect makes sense, pointing the old seasonal page's URL to the shop's current, general menu page so anyone arriving via that old link lands somewhere relevant rather than at an error.
Case two: a shop's footer had linked to a nearby partner business's website for years, and that partner closed and let its domain lapse. The footer link now leads to a dead site or a generic placeholder page. This case has no real ongoing traffic pointing specifically at that footer link from outside sources, no inbound links from other sites are directing anyone there, so the correct fix is simply removing the link from the footer entirely, no redirect needed, since there is nothing worth preserving continuity for.
The contrast between these two cases is the whole decision framework in miniature. Real, identifiable external interest in the specific old URL argues for a redirect. A dead link with no outside traffic pointing at it argues for a simple removal, and inventing a redirect for a link nobody is using just adds unnecessary complexity to the site for no real benefit. Neither case required guesswork; both were settled by the same honest question, is anything real still pointing at this specific address.
Building the Habit
A broken link cleanup does not need to become a large recurring project. Doing this whole process once, on the first of the month, and again any time the menu changes, since a menu update is one of the most common sources of a newly broken link, keeps the list small and manageable rather than letting it grow into something overwhelming.
This is a fix, in most cases, measured in a couple of hours for a typical small cafe site, not a matter of days, and it does not require any of the enterprise level tools, log file analysis or large scale crawlers, built for sites with thousands of pages. A small, regular habit handles a small site's broken links completely fine on its own.
None of this is presented as something that will raise a site's traffic or rankings. Nothing in the sourcing behind this post measures that connection, and no honest post should claim it. What fixing broken links reliably does is remove a small, real point of friction for a real visitor trying to do something specific, check the menu, place an order, find directions, which is worth doing on its own terms.
It also helps to think about who encounters a broken link on a small cafe site. It is rarely a random stranger browsing idly; it is often someone already fairly close to visiting, following a saved link, a bookmark from a previous visit, a link shared by a friend who already ate there. A broken link at that specific moment interrupts someone who was already close to walking through the door, which is exactly why the customer facing links deserve first attention in the triage order above.
Related Reading
More from Hillcane on this topic, plus the pages on the site that sit next to the work.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find broken links on my cafe website?
Use a free link checker like Screaming Frog to crawl your site and flag links returning an error, and separately check Search Console's Pages report under Indexing for the Not found (404) and Soft 404 categories, which shows pages Google itself has tried and failed to reach. The two together give a fuller picture than either alone.
Do I need to set up a redirect for every broken link?
No. Most broken links on a small cafe site just need the link updated to the current destination, such as a renamed menu PDF, or removed, such as a footer link to a partner business that closed and let its domain lapse. A redirect is only needed when the old page had real inbound links or ongoing traffic from outside your site, like a seasonal fall menu page a food blog linked to months earlier, which can redirect to the current menu.
What is a soft 404 and why does it matter?
A soft 404 is a page that shows a not found message to a visitor but technically returns a normal, successful status code instead of the actual not found status. This can make tools and search engines treat the page inconsistently, since it looks technically fine even though it shows a visitor nothing useful. Fixing it usually means correcting the page's configured status, not just changing a link.
Which broken links should I fix first?
Start with the links customers use directly: menu, hours, order and directions. Those stand between a visitor and a visit or a purchase, and the person hitting them is often close to walking in, following a bookmark or a link a friend shared. Internal links between your own pages come next, since they help navigation. External links pointing off your site, such as a moved news article, come last because they least affect what a visitor came to do.
Will fixing broken links improve my search rankings?
There is no data available that measures this connection, and this post makes no such claim. No fresh crawl of the 1,109 census homepages was run, so there is no share of cafes with broken links to report either. What fixing broken links reliably does is remove friction for a visitor trying to check the menu, place an order or find directions, which is worth a couple of hours on a small site regardless of any unmeasured ranking effect.
How do I set up a redirect on Wix, Squarespace or Shopify?
Each platform has its own redirect manager, usually under a URL redirects or SEO tools section in settings rather than the page editor. Enter the old path and the new destination, save, and the platform serves the redirect automatically. Then visit the old URL directly in a browser to confirm it lands on the intended page rather than an error; that takes under a minute and catches a typo in either path that would otherwise leave the redirect silently broken.
Should I worry that deleting a page hurts my search results?
Most broken links do not need a redirect at all; they need the link itself changed or removed. A redirect is only necessary when the removed page had real inbound links or real traffic pointing at it. Check Search Console's Pages report under Indexing for Not found (404) and Soft 404 entries, and compare with a Screaming Frog crawl, to see which old URLs are still being reached. That set is usually smaller than owners assume.
How often should I check for broken links?
A simple, workable habit is checking on the first of each month, and again any time the menu changes, since menu updates are one of the most common sources of a newly broken link. This keeps the list small and manageable, typically a task of a couple of hours for a small site, rather than letting it build up.
What tools did this post test to compare what they catch and miss?
Screaming Frog, a free crawler with a crawl limit generously sized for a small cafe site, and Search Console's own Pages report under Indexing, which lists Not found (404) and Soft 404 URLs Google tried to reach. A useful way to compare them is a five page test site with one broken internal link, one external and one PDF. Neither tool catches everything, such as links behind scripts, and neither is endorsed over alternatives.
How can Hillcane help find and fix broken links on my cafe site?
Hillcane can run Screaming Frog and the Search Console Pages report against your site, sort each broken link into update, redirect or remove, and set any redirects in your builder's redirect manager, then test each one by visiting the old URL. It can also help set up the habit of a check on the first of each month and after every menu change. Reach out at hillcane.co/contact or call (256) 384-2449 to talk it through.
Work with Hillcane
A broken link is a small fix with a clear order: customer facing links first, then internal, then external. Most do not need a redirect at all.
If you want a quick pass through your cafe site to find and fix broken links, reach Hillcane at hillcane.co/contact or call (256) 384-2449.
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