Broken links, dead links or ‘404 page not found’ results are more serious than you think. Here’s why you need to check your website and search for and destroy them.
Website maintenance has many elements, one of which is checking for, fixing and getting rid of broken links. If SEO, search engine ranking and increased traffic are important to you (we’ll assume they are, if you’re reading this), checking for broken links should be a regular activity.
Broken links affect SEO in more ways than one
Broken links work against your efforts for user-friendliness and therefore higher-ranking measures for quality content. And, as you may know, on an individual level, as a browser, it’s extremely irritating to get that ‘404 Not Found’ message when you’ve intentionally clicked to arrive at a what you thought might be a useful place on your search journey.
As well as 404 Not Found being a negative experience for users, and highly likely to put them off returning to your website, the search engine crawlers are potentially finding them before any users do and using their discoveries to instigate penalties on your entire site.
The consequences of broken links are therefore a lot more severe than you might think.
What are broken links?
A broken link, also called a dead link, is a link that doesn’t go anywhere. It could be a link to a page that simply no longer exists or it could be an incorrect URL, or a page on a website blocked by a firewall.
Potentially, the link could originally have functioned fine and well, but the page and its content may have been moved, removed or URL altered.
Changing to a new CMS can also result in broken links.
Whatever the reason, these dead links you may have on your website should be removed as quickly as possible. A website with many dead links is said to have ‘link rot’, which you want to avoid at all costs.
Untold negative SEO effects of broken links
Search engine crawlers work endlessly to classify and rank web pages. If they detect a broken link, they will simply move on and rank your page, even site as poor for usability.
It’s difficult to say exactly how much damage one or several broken links will cause SEO-wise, but the outcome is far from positive and will, without doubt, cost you valuable rankings.
How to check for broken links
We would never suggest that you manually go through your website and check every single link – don’t worry! This could potentially take a very long time to do.
There are many good, free website checkers you can use – too many to list.
As a starter, and if you’re a Google Chrome user you can login to your Google Analytics account, which not only checks your performance but checks for broken links.
If you enter your website’s 404 error page title, you can filter and search each one. You can also set up an email alert to tell you about broken links as they occur, which is highly recommended.
Search, fix and understand broken links
When you’re searching for and fixing broken links, also take time to understand why they’ve occurred. Note is a website has been taken down, if content has moved, or if there is a firewall issue. Noting these issues may help you to avoid broken links going forward.
Don’t ruin a good website
The main takeaway from this article is: broken links hurt your SEO and can ruin an otherwise great website. Don’t let all your efforts in making your website excellent in all other regards, go to waste by not checking broken links.
Need help checking for and fixing broken links? Get in touch with our super web team.
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