Link rot refers to the gradual accumulation of broken links across a website over time, as external pages get deleted or moved by their own site owners, and internal content changes without corresponding link updates.
Older, established websites are particularly susceptible to link rot, since content published years earlier often links to external resources that may no longer exist by the time a visitor encounters that old page today.
Combating link rot requires periodic content audits specifically checking for broken outbound links, updating or removing references to resources that no longer exist.
We address link rot as part of ongoing content maintenance within our SEO Content Strategy service.