Checking for Broken Links and Fixing Errors

One of the most essential tasks in website maintenance is checking for broken links and fixing errors. Broken links, whether internal or external, can significantly harm the user experience, reduce search engine rankings, and even harm your site's credibility. Regularly checking for broken links and fixing errors is a key routine maintenance task that helps ensure your website runs smoothly and efficiently. In this article, we’ll explore why it’s important to check for broken links, how to identify them, and best practices for fixing these errors.

Why Checking for Broken Links is Important

1. User Experience

Broken links disrupt the user experience by leading visitors to pages that no longer exist, result in error messages, or provide no useful information. This can frustrate users, cause them to leave your site, and negatively impact engagement metrics like time on site, page views, and bounce rates. A poor user experience may also result in lost trust and can make users less likely to return to your site.

2. SEO Impact

Search engines like Google use links to discover new pages, index content, and evaluate the quality of websites. Broken links, especially internal links that point to non-existent pages, can negatively affect your site’s SEO performance. Search engines may crawl these broken pages, which could waste valuable crawl budget and reduce your site's rankings. External broken links (links pointing to other websites) can also damage your site's authority and relevance.

3. Website Authority and Credibility

When visitors click on a link and land on a page that no longer exists, it gives the impression that the website is outdated and poorly maintained. This can hurt your site’s credibility and make it appear unprofessional. Regularly checking for and fixing broken links is an easy way to demonstrate your commitment to providing a high-quality, up-to-date experience for users.

4. Keeping Content Up-to-Date

In some cases, broken links are the result of external websites or resources being moved or deleted. By fixing these links, you can ensure your content stays relevant and informative. Broken links could lead to important resources like research papers, product pages, or news articles being inaccessible, which could impact the value of your content.

How to Identify Broken Links

Finding broken links on your website can be a tedious task if done manually, especially for larger websites. Fortunately, there are many tools available to help automate the process and identify broken links efficiently.

1. Using Website Crawlers

Website crawlers like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Sitebulb can be used to scan your entire website and generate a list of broken links. These tools crawl every page, follow internal links, and flag any pages with a 404 error or pages that return a server error.

• Screaming Frog: This free tool allows you to crawl up to 500 pages on a site and detect broken links, missing images, and other SEO-related issues.

• Ahrefs: Ahrefs provides an extensive broken link checker as part of its suite of SEO tools, which can crawl your website and help find and fix broken links.

• Sitebulb: Sitebulb offers detailed audits and reports to identify both broken internal and external links, along with helpful recommendations for improvement.

2. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is an essential tool for monitoring the health of your website, and it provides valuable information about crawl errors, including broken links. It can help you identify URLs that are returning a 404 error or other issues that prevent them from being indexed properly.

• Crawl Errors: Google Search Console provides a coverage report that shows URLs with crawl issues, including broken links.

• Manual Checks: You can also manually enter specific URLs into the “URL Inspection” tool to check whether they are indexed or returning an error.

3. Online Broken Link Checkers

There are several free online tools available to check for broken links on your site. Some popular options include:

• Broken Link Checker: This tool checks both internal and external links for any errors.

• Dead Link Checker: It provides a simple, user-friendly interface to scan your website for broken links and provides easy-to-understand reports.

• Dr. Link Check: This tool also scans websites for broken links and offers an email alert feature for ongoing monitoring.

4. Browser Extensions

There are browser extensions available for quickly checking individual pages for broken links, such as Check My Links (for Google Chrome). These tools can quickly scan a page and highlight broken links in red, making it easy to identify and address them.

How to Fix Broken Links

Once broken links are identified, the next step is to fix them. Depending on the type of link (internal or external), there are various ways to address the issue.

1. Fixing Internal Broken Links

Internal broken links are those that point to non-existent pages or resources on your website. These can be fixed relatively easily by:

• Updating the URL: If the page has been moved or renamed, update the broken link to the correct URL.

• Redirecting the Link: If the page no longer exists but you want to preserve the link’s value, set up a 301 redirect to send users to a relevant page. This is especially useful for pages that are permanently removed.

• Removing the Link: If the page no longer exists and there’s no relevant replacement, it may be best to remove the broken link from the content entirely.

2. Fixing External Broken Links

External broken links are links pointing to other websites or resources that have been moved or deleted. Fixing external broken links can be more challenging since you have no control over the linked website. However, there are a few options:

• Find Alternative Links: If the external resource is no longer available, search for alternative sources to link to. For example, if you were linking to a blog post that no longer exists, find another blog post or article that provides similar information.

• Update Links to Live Pages: Sometimes, websites update their URLs or move content. Visit the external link to see if it has been relocated, and update your link to the new destination.

• Contact the Website Owner: If the external link points to valuable content that is critical to your site’s purpose, consider contacting the website owner to inquire about the link’s status or request an updated URL.

3. Fixing 404 Errors

A 404 error occurs when a user tries to access a page that does not exist. Fixing these errors involves:

• Creating a Custom 404 Page: If you haven’t already, create a custom 404 error page that helps users find their way back to your website, providing links to popular pages or a search bar.

• Redirecting to Relevant Pages: If a page has been deleted, use 301 redirects to send users to a relevant page to ensure they don’t end up on a dead-end.

4. Preventing Future Broken Links

To prevent broken links from appearing in the future:

• Regularly Audit Your Website: Schedule routine checks (weekly, monthly) to ensure that all links remain active.

• Maintain Content Quality: Update old content and monitor external links to ensure they still lead to live, relevant pages.

• Monitor User-Generated Content: If your site allows user-generated content (such as blog comments or forum posts), ensure that any external links within that content are valid and functional.

Best Practices for Link Management

• Use Descriptive Anchor Text: When creating links, use clear, descriptive anchor text that accurately represents the linked page. This improves usability and SEO.

• Avoid Linking to Low-Quality Sources: Make sure the external websites you link to are reputable and frequently updated. This reduces the chance of external links breaking over time.

• Consider Link Shorteners for Long URLs: For links that are long or complex, use URL shorteners to make them cleaner and easier to maintain.

Checking for broken links and fixing errors is an essential part of maintaining a website. By regularly performing link audits and addressing broken links, you can significantly improve your site’s user experience, SEO performance, and credibility. Use the right tools to identify broken links efficiently, and implement best practices for managing and fixing them.