Broken links can harm a website’s user experience, causing frustration and reducing engagement. These links are missing pieces of a website that result in 4xx errors, making it impossible for users and web crawlers to access certain pages.
To ensure a seamless browsing experience for your users, it’s important to regularly check for broken links and fix them promptly. This can be done by using various tools and techniques to identify and correct any issues. let us solve this problem and see How to Find and Fix Broken Links.
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What Causes Broken Links?
There are two types of broken links: internal and external. Internal broken links occur when pages on your website that are interconnected have issues, while external broken links come from other pages on your site do not exist anymore. Regardless of the type of broken link you’re dealing with, they share some common causes.
One common cause of broken links is misspelled URLs. Typos and spelling mistakes are common human errors that can cause problems for servers. If the link is not correctly spelled, the server won’t be able to understand the URL and won’t process it any further.
Another cause of broken links is URL restructuring. For example, if you’ve launched a new site from the same domain, renamed or deleted a page from your site, or made other changes, it can confuse servers and result in a 404 error. In this case, users who click on a link may be directed to a page that doesn’t exist.
Finally, broken code can also cause broken links. There may be loopholes in your site’s code that need to be repaired. While these issues may not directly affect the links, they can sometimes cause them to malfunction.
How Do Broken Links Affect SEO?
Having broken links on your website can significantly impact your SEO in multiple ways. Search engines rely on links to crawl, understand, and index your pages.
If there are broken links on your website, search engine crawlers may not be able to access all of your content, which can result in lower rankings. Moreover, if the links lead to errors more than 2-3 times, the crawlers may stop coming to your page altogether.
Search engines prioritize good user experience, so if your website fails to provide that, it can lead to a drop in your rankings. Therefore, it is crucial to regularly check and fix any broken links on your website to ensure both search engines and users have a positive experience.
How To Find Broken Links?
As you now know the causes of broken links let us move on to the next step which is finding broken links. You don’t have to check every page of your site having links rather you can simply use some tools and tricks to do your work very easily. Let’s discuss them here:
1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that can crawl and discover broken links like Google. They will crawl the site and if there is any broken link or they identify any crawl error, it will notify you. The steps to check broken links with Google Search Console are as follows:
- Log in to the Google search console
- Select the site you want to check
- Click crawl and fetch as google
- After the crawling click on crawl and then at crawl errors
- Under crawl errors click on URL errors and you will find all the broken links possible.
2. SEMrush site audit tool
SEMrush site audit tool is also an amazing tool to audit your site and find errors. Using this tool you can check both the internal and external broken links for your website.
For checking internally go to the SEMrush site audit tool and create a new project. Select the site audit option from the menu so it appears. Add the number of pages you want to crawl. Once you conduct the site audit you will receive a report from which you can check the broken links.
For checking broken backlinks again go to the menu panel then select backlink audit. Once you have conducted the audit you will find the backlink errors by going to the target pages’ tab and selecting target URL error.
3. Screaming Frog
If you’re looking for an efficient crawling tool, Screaming Frog is a highly recommended option. It offers a free version that can crawl up to 500 URLs. The tool is easy to download and use. Once you have it, open the SEO spider and paste the URL you want to check.
After crawling, head over to the response codes tab and select the client error option from the menu. This will filter out the broken links, allowing you to view them quickly. Screaming Frog is a fantastic tool that can save you a lot of time and effort.
4. Ahrefs’ site audit
Ahrefs’ site explorer tool has a special and the best backlinks checker with the largest database and one of the most active crawlers. It can check both internal and external broken links in a very easy way.
For conducting a broken links audit go to the Site Explorer tool paste your site URL and conduct the audit. Then select the broken link option from the menu in the outgoing subcategory.
How To Fix The Broken Links?
Now that you have gained ample knowledge about identifying broken links, let us delve deeper into the topic and discuss how to fix them. Broken links can adversely affect your website’s search engine ranking and user experience.
There are various ways to fix broken links, and the most common solution is to either remove or update them. However, you don’t have to fix all the links you find on your site you only need to fix the links from high-priority pages.
One of the most SEO-friendly ways to resolve the issue of broken links is by using 301 redirects. This method informs search engines about the updates made to the broken links, and it’s the best option when you have shifted a page’s location or stopped selling a product.
Another way is to remove the broken link altogether. This method is useful when you don’t need the content linked or when updating your page’s content. You can manually remove the broken links, and this can greatly enhance your website’s user experience.
Additionally, you can fix broken links by updating any typos present in your content or URL structure. It’s essential to check your XML sitemaps carefully and edit them if required, as this can help fix the problems of broken links to a great extent.
By implementing these solutions, you can ensure that your website’s user experience and search engine ranking remain unaffected by broken links.
