You’re committed to squeezing every last drop of value from your website, be it a personal blog, an online storefront, or a corporate portal. Undoubtedly, you’ve already invested considerable effort into search engine optimization (SEO).

But have you paid attention to a detail that’s often brushed under the rug but can make a significant difference?

Yes, we’re talking about the importance of mending broken links on your website. Neglecting this issue could lead to setbacks in your website’s performance, deteriorate user engagement, and, most critically, pull down your site’s search engine rankings.

If you want to know why this seemingly trivial matter is so consequential, and how to address it, then read on.

What is a broken link? A broken link, also known as a dead link or link rot, is a link on a web page that is no longer accessible or that a user can’t find. Broken links on your website might be of two types:

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Internal links are those that connect pages on your website. These are the links over which you have the most authority on your website. Users will be taken to the same website but a different page by clicking on these internal links.

As a result, anytime you update or make changes to your website, double-check your internal links to ensure they are still functional.

Outbound links, also known as external links, are links that lead to another website. For example, using a case study, I’m referring to Neil Patel’s blog post on how he increased his sales by 185%. Because this link goes to another website, it will be an external link.

External links necessitate additional time spent verifying because we cannot control when they change. As a result, you’ll need to check it periodically to determine if the connection is still active. Manually, of course. Assume I linked to a website, but the website owner removed the link a few months later.

As a result, Google Spiders will interpret that link to the other website as a dead end when they crawl my site. Furthermore, when Google Spiders discover an excessive number of 404 error pages, the value of your website is reduced in the eyes of the search engines. So, if you assume that broken links on your website won’t hurt it, you’re mistaken. Of course, search engines could hurt you, but there are a few other factors to consider.

Broken links can be the result of a variety of factors. However, the server always returns an error message when a user tries to access a dead link. The following are some examples of web server error codes:

  • 400 Bad Request: The URL on your website isn’t recognized by the host server.
  • 404 Page Not Found:  The page doesn’t exist on the server; hence, the page isn’t available.
  • Bad code: The server answer is invalid and violates the HTTP specification.
  • Bad host: The server with that name doesn’t exist or can’t be reached.
  • Bad URL:  URL is incorrect such as a missing bracket, extra slashes, wrong protocol, etc.
  • Empty: The host server responds with “empty” responses with no data and no response code.
  • Connections are dropped when the host server is reset. Either it’s set up incorrectly, or it’s too crowded.
  • Timeout: During the link inspection, HTTP requests always timed out.
  • Broken links can occur for a variety of reasons.
  • A firewall or geographical restriction bars outside access.
  • HTML, Javascript, CSS, or CMS plugins interfere with the page’s elements.
  • The URL was input incorrectly by the website owner. For instance, typos, misspellings, and other errors.
  • The site’s URL structure has changed recently. Error 404 is returned if this occurs without a redirect.
  • Links to content that has been relocated or removed like Google Docs, PDFs, videos, etc.
  • For instance, the link to the external site has expired when you’re permanently relocated or offline.
broken links

The 404 error page not only irritates search engines and users but also impacts your business. Here are some of the factors broken links can affect:

Your earnings

In the conversion process, broken links represent a bottleneck. Your SEO efforts will be wasted if customers can’t access the conversion page, no matter how much time you spend getting them to your site. So you’re not only losing money, but you’re also losing consumers.

This is because if one consumer is dissatisfied, they will tell their friends about it, and you will lose several customers. KISSmetrics researched this and discovered that 44% would tell others about a terrible internet experience.

Your visitors will spread the word if you don’t provide an excellent user experience and lose more consumers. After all, you don’t want to spend time and money constructing your website only to have unsatisfied visitors, do you? Consider how frustrating it is to click on a link in search of further information, only to be redirected to a 404 error page stating that the answer does not exist.

Bounce Rate 

The bounce rate is calculated based on the number of times visitors spend on your page; if they don’t stay for a given amount of time, they are regarded to have “bounced” from your page. Likewise, when visitors are dissatisfied with your site, they will all quit, resulting in a greater bounce rate.

When search engines see a high bounce rate on your page, they will raise a red signal, and your entire site will appear irrelevant. As a result, it’s critical to keep visitors pleased with your site by offering a positive user experience. Never lead them to broken links.

Google rank

As I previously stated, a high bounce rate can result in a poorer ranking in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). When Google notices that visitors leave your page seconds after arriving, it assumes that they didn’t discover what they were looking for. Because the page has been identified as less reputable and reliable, Google will rank it lower in the SERPs. Not having your page indexed is another aspect that will influence your Google ranking.

Dead links have a significant impact on your Google search results but not on your total SEO. However, this does not imply that you have become irresponsible and ceased repairing any broken links. If you don’t fix them, it could signal that your site has been abandoned or ignored. When you’re focused on building your business, you don’t want your website to appear neglected or abandoned.

Remember that Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines use dead links to judge the quality of a website. So, if you care about the quality of your website, fix any broken links as soon as you see them. The good news is that Google will notify you if any faults are discovered.

Customer experience

The user experience has an impact on SEO. If you have a lot of dead links, your user experience will suffer, and your SEO efforts will suffer as a result. Although search engines may recognize that there are broken links, your actual users may not.

Bounce rate

Fixing broken links can help you reduce your bounce rate significantly. When visitors to your site cannot find the information they seek, they will immediately move on to other websites where they can find it. You don’t want a simple operation like removing broken links to stifle your company’s growth.

Bounce rate reduction helps SEO and drives users down your funnel, resulting in more engagement and conversions. However, while optimizing bounce rate is always a good idea, repairing broken links is low-hanging fruit.

SEMRush

SEMRush (Disclaimer: affiliate link)is one of the most powerful SEO tools available. It makes it simple to keep track of your website’s SEO rankings and overall status. It also comes with a robust site audit tool that crawls your site for common issues and generates a comprehensive report for you.

You’ll need to create a SEMRush account first. Although it is a commercial service, they have a limited free account that allows you to crawl up to 100 pages on a single domain. Limits on paid plans start at 100,000 pages per month. Once logged in, go to the left menu and pick the ‘Site Audit’ link. You’ll be taken to the Site Audit page. Then, to add your website, go to the top of the page and select the ‘New Site Audit’ option.

You’ll be prompted to type in your domain name. After that, you’ll be prompted to set up site auditing options. For example, you can specify how many sites to crawl and which crawl provider to use.

To proceed, click the start crawling button. For the site assessment, SEMRush will immediately begin crawling your website. Depending on how many pages you picked for the crawl, this could take a few minutes. After you’ve finished, go to the Site Audit area and click on your domain to get your report.

To see the broken links on your site, go to the report summary and click the ‘Broken’ option.

Broken links report in SEMRush

You can now download your crawl report by clicking the Export icon in the top right corner of the screen. When it comes to restoring broken links on your website, you’ll need it.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a fantastic all-in-one SEO solution for marketers, businesses, and SEO experts. It provides in-depth SEO analysis of your website and any of your competitors. Keyword research, competition analysis, organic and paid keyword ideas, and site health monitoring, including broken links, are all possible.

You’ll need to create an Ahrefs account first. It is a paid service, with monthly subscriptions starting at $99 per month. For $7, they also offer a full-featured 7-day trial. Once you’ve logged into your Ahref dashboard, go to the Site Explorer tool and type in your domain name.

The Site Explorer tool will now crawl your website to generate reports. Depending on how much material you have on your website, this could take some time. You’ll see a summary of your site explorer results when you’re done. From here, select Pages » Best by Links from the drop-down menu, then sort your report by 404 status.

To fix broken links on your WordPress site, you may now export your report in CSV format.

You can also go to Site Audit>>Links and see both Internal and External broken links.

Google Analytics 

Google Analytics is a fantastic free tool for tracking website performance and quickly identifying broken links. Go to your Google Analytics account and select the Behavior tab to get started. Then choose “Site Content,” followed by “All Pages.”

Make sure the evaluation period corresponds to the amount of time you intend to spend looking at it. Set the period for the month since your last check if you check for broken links monthly.

You’ll see viewing options if you scroll down. It will most likely be set to “Page,” but change it to “Page Title.”

A page title filter can now be created. As shown below, select the “advanced” option:

Set your filtering to Include > Page Title> Containing> “Your 404 Page Title” once you’re in the “advanced” panel, as seen here:

After clicking “Apply,” you’ll be shown one or more page titles that include that name. Unfortunately, we only have one because this was only a one-month period.

When you click on the page title, you’ll get a list of broken links that lead to the 404 page:

In the full-screen view, we can see that the 404 error has occurred 2,071 times, and if we scroll down, we can see that it has occurred on 964 pages:

If you know all the areas where the links appear on your website, you may convert the report into a spreadsheet and update the links or set up redirects to route to the proper page. Various nonexistent or broken links trigger the 404 error page.

Although most websites contain a simple message, providing the visitor with a call to action is great practice. For example, you can link to your home page, your blog’s home page, or your contact page.

Google Analytics allows you to set up email alerts to receive these broken link reports regularly and export broken links’ data. It’s important to remember that redirecting and resolving broken links is a continuous activity. Once a month is an appropriate cadence for the average website.

Google Search Console

After the bots have inspected your website, Google Search Console can help you find any issues, including broken links. It’s worth noting that the console only displays URLs on your site, not external ones.

Go to “Coverage” then “Details” on your Google Search Console to detect issues.

Google Search Console

Keep in mind that Crawl Errors are given priority. If your URLs aren’t important, they won’t impact the search results. The following is a list of current pages that are returning errors. The importance of fixing broken links is revealed in this report. These pages will impact the current search results unless they are fixed. Avoid letting Google alert you to broken links, and make it a habit to wipe them out regularly.

Click the following link for more thorough how to guide to fixing broken links on Google.

Linkilo

Our link auditing and link suggestion WordPress plugin also comes with a nice automated broken link checker tool. All you have to do is select the frequency, the day and the time you want our tool to check and we will email you of any broken links or you can view them below. Other features such as replacing the broken link, and know where each broken is from and why, its all there, right on your website.

We’ve demonstrated four alternative ways to locate broken links in WordPress. Next, let’s discuss how to quickly and easily fix broken links in WordPress.

The best fix for a broken link is redirecting it to another relevant page. If you moved an article’s content to a new location, set up a redirect to the updated article.

When an article is no longer available, direct viewers to a comparable page closely related to the content of the previous item. Accomplish this by setting up 301 redirects.

Install and Activate the Redirection Plugin

Start by installing and activating the Redirection plugin.

Configure Redirects After activation, navigate to Tools » Redirection page to set up redirects. Input the old broken link in the ‘Source URL’ field, and enter the new URL in the ‘Target URL’ field.

The Redirection plugin

Save Changes and Test

Save your changes by clicking the ‘Add redirect’ button. Test the fix by accessing the previously broken link, which should now take you to the updated page. Repeat this procedure to replace all broken links on your website.

Here are some best practices for dealing with all situations involving dead links:

While deep links, also known as anchor text or internal linking, are important, only use them when necessary. If you must use deep links, devise a plan to unearth the dead ones periodically.

Monitor Google Crawl Errors

As we’ve seen, Google Search Console can help you locate dead links on your website. The search console also aids in detecting both relevant (404 errors) and irrelevant (not found) issues.

Employ Redirection Techniques

When users encounter dead links, redirect them to a new source of information. To redirect (301) the dead page to the new destination, use the following code: meta HTTP-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL='http://new-website.com'" />

Consider these additional suggestions for redirecting:

  • Redirect (301) the broken page to another relevant page on your site.
  • Identify a relevant piece of content on your site and link to it from the dead page.

Address External Broken

Links If an external link is broken, reach out to the linked website and request a fix. The same goes for you. Update any dead links on your end that lead to other websites.

Update Broken URL

Content Determine what the broken page used to be and replace or reconstruct its content.

Consider Leaving as a 404 If the relevant page is no longer available, consider displaying a 404 page. We recommend using a “hard” 404 instead of a “soft” 404.

The simplest method is to always copy the URL rather than typing it in. Despite this being a no-brainer, some people still enter the URL manually! Here are a few more methods for avoiding broken links:

Ensure URL Validity

When adding a link to your website, verify that the URL is valid and use the full URL rather than starting with www. If you’re worried about inputting it correctly, copy and paste the URL from your browser’s address bar. Avoid typing errors at all costs.

Publish Before Copying URL

If you use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, publish the post or page before copying the URL. If the post or page is in draft mode, the real URL will not be live, and you may see something like this: https://example.com/?p=2857&preview=true instead of https://example.com/name-of-the-post.

Evaluate Source Reputation

Always examine the site for a source’s reputation if you’re citing it. It’s one thing to find a source by searching online, but before adding an external link, ensure the site has been around for a few years.

Check Site Safety

Before adding any external links to your site, check if the site is safe to connect to. It’s possible that a malicious bot could crawl their site and then move on to yours, causing server problems.

How can I determine whether or not a URL is safe?

You can use various services to check if a link is safe to post on your site. Google Safe Browsing is a fantastic place to start.

Copy and paste the following URL into your browser: http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site= After that, enter the address of the site you want to inspect, such as google.com or an IP address. It will tell you if it has been infected with malware in the last 90 days.

google transparency report