One important problem for website owners and SEO specialists is the broken links. There are two types of broken links; internal broken links and external broken links. Dead links are links that direct users to a page that is no longer available. This may be due to several causes; the website may have been erased, the page relocated or the user might have keyed in the wrong link. Broken links are a disadvantageous occurrence to both the users and SEO, given that they should be detected and corrected frequently.
Here, you will learn the real concept of – how to detect bad links, fix them, and avoid similar problems in the future. Also, we will discuss how to find backlinks and dead links, and this information will help backlinks and SEO define the health of a website.
- SEO Impact: Missing URLs are not at all beneficial which also can become the reason for bad SEO ranking. Google and other search engines will rank those sites that have good backlinks and SEO and better and easy-to-use interfaces. Such dead links do provoke a signal that the site is abandoned and is not receiving the proper care it should.
- Loss of Link Equity: Backlinks are considered to be the most powerful factors affecting SEO ranking. When you have broken links coming to your site from other sites, you not only get no benefit from the link juice, but you lose the benefit of those links going to the authoritative site.
It is easy to find backlinks to a site. Here are various reasons you should find and fix broken links regularly:
- SEO Health: Actually, the frequent checking and identifying of broken links are very essential in managing your website’s SEO. Some search engines such as Google can punish websites that contain broken or dead links.
- Enhanced User Experience: In its simplest form, free of broken links provides you better usability, and therefore, more engagement and fewer bounces.
- Improved Site Navigation: When you correct broken links, you enhance the flow of your site and the site’s users will have an easy time searching for the necessary information.
The first step in any broken link fix is to discover those broken links. There are many approaches to using broken links and, again, it will depend on the individual or the team or the tools available to them.
1. Manually Checking Links:
Some techniques can be implemented conveniently on small websites containing a few pages or two; nevertheless, the most efficient of them involves link checking manually. Go through every page of your site and see which link leads to a broken one before you get there. However, this method is not feasible when there are thousands of pages or other links within the website in question.
2. Using Google Search Console:
If SEO issues concern you, Google Search Console is a must-have tool in your toolkit. It helps the user to control their site within Google search results. Under the “Crawl Errors” segment of the Console, you can also identify the broken links. Here’s how you can use it:
Open Google Search Console and enter it.
Click on the index on the ribbon and select the coverage option on the Coverage section of the ribbon.
Search for any 404 errors, which are signs that all the links are not working.
You can also check URLs and see if any of them or a particular web page is giving a 404 Not Found message.
3. Find Broken Links Using Online Tools:
There are some online programs and applications to identify broken links, and there are also some settings for website developers. These tools crawl through your website and come up with a list of all the damaged links. Some popular tools include:
- Broken Link Checker: This free tool is useful to help point out the links on your website that are dead. Internal and external links are checked and you are given a list of links that you may need to work on.
- Ahrefs: This SEO tool provides users with a site audit, which not only identifies link issues but also a host of other SEO problems. Check how to use it to identify broken backlinks to a site as well as assess the overall health of your site.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This is a sort of desktop application that works on your website and can give a full report of SEO problems like broken links, redirections and much more. Thus, using such a calendar is particularly useful, for instance for large-scale web resources.
- SEMrush: With SEMrush, you can identify whether you have any broken links and what the quality of the backlinks pointing to your sites is. This tool helps categorize the reports in internal and external broken links’ characteristics.
4. Find Dead Links on Websites Using Browser Extensions:
While using the browser, extensions are one of the quickest methods to identify the broken links on your website. Some popular options include:
Check My Links (Chrome Extension): This browser extension underlines links when you visit your site, so you do not need to look for them manually.
1. Internal Links: Update or Replace:
They are links that direct web users to other pages in the same website. If you find a broken internal link, you should either:
- Update the URL: If the page was relocated, replace the internal link with the new location on the Web.
- Redirect the Link: In the case you cannot find the new page, you can map the broken link to an appropriate page using 301 redirect.
- Remove the Link: If such a page is no longer available and there is no other similar work, then one must delete the link.
2. Fix External Broken Links:
Hyperlinks grab users to other sites and web pages. Healing these links is a bit more complex as you do not control the websites that your links were changed to. However, here’s what you can do:
- Update the Link: If the link has been moved and there is the new URL then you can simply change the link and make it go to the new page.
- Find an Alternative Link: In case the page is not accessible anymore, look for a similar external resource and change the link to the current page.
- Remove the Link: If no appropriate replacement is to be made, then the external link in your website should be deleted first.
3. Fix 404 Errors with Redirects:
Otherwise, when a page has been completely deleted or moved without a redirect, the page will give a 404 error. Take, for example, a fashion magazine that makes alterations in its content; instead of reaching its homepage, those who have typed the web address directly will be taken to the appropriate page using 301 redirects. This is useful in order to keep the search engine optimisation of the old page plus to ensure that users do not end up in a dead-end.
4. Fix Backlink Issues:
1. Implement Redirects:
When you move or delete any page, create a 301 redirect to help users and search engines to find the correct page. This makes sure that you do not lose any traffic or characteristics of SEO from the old page.
2. Check Your Site Daily For Broken Links:
Unfortunately, you should check your website periodically in order to identify the broken links. You should set up a time-based crawl using Google Search Console or a third-party crawler and notify you whenever there are new 404 errors so that you act before these links impact your SEO.
3. Content Management System (CMS):
There are tons of plugins in almost every contemporary CMS including WordPress that allow for detecting broken links at the touch of a button. Extensions like the Broken Link Checker for WordPress will let you know when a site has a broken link so you can act on it immediately.
4. Update Your Content Regularly:
If there are any URLs embedded in your blogs, landing pages, or any other content you’re putting out there, updating your content will help you to check through all of them and confirm that they are not broken. This helps to minimize occurrences of dealing with dead links.
Conclusion
Mistaken links have proved to be unhealthy for the website, users, and even the SEO results of the site. The benefits of this process include better usability and search engine optimization of the site and the ability to provide visitors to your resource with accurate information at any stage in its operation.
Google Search Console reported link issues, third-party tools such as Ahrefs and Screaming Frog, browser extensions, and yes, even manually. After defining the broken links, the usage of internal links, replacement of external links or using the 301-redirect will fix the situation on a site. Further, just as easy and effective as it is, checking for broken links in your site frequently and providing various preventive measures such as redirection will help to save you lots of time and energy in the long run.
Therefore, to avoid wasted efforts, broken links cost lots of money, and time, as you keep on fixing them and making sure your site is usable by visitors and search engines. This is something that can never be overlooked if you are maintaining your own website or if you are working with your client’s site.
