Fixing broken links is essential for maintaining a healthy website and your SEO value. Also known as dead links or “404 errors,” broken links show up when a linked resource(page, image, document) is no longer available at the specified URL.
A broken link can have a severe impact on your user experience, leave visitors frustrated, and signal low quality or neglect to search engines. This will further result in a drop in rankings on search results.
In this article, you will explore the process of recognizing and fixing broken links without losing your hard-earned SEO value. You will also learn about the effect broken links can have on your SEO campaign.
Broken Links: Harmful for Your SEO Efforts
Here are the reasons why broken links can cause problems for your SEO campaign:
Negative User Experience
When users click on a link only to be met with a 404 error page, it is frustrating. This will prompt them to leave your site and not return, further impacting your SEO in Austin. It will further increase your bounce rates and negatively impact your conversion rates.
Wasted Crawl Budget
Search engine crawlers have a limited crawl budget for each site. When they encounter broken links, they waste this budget trying to access non-existent pages. This means they might not crawl your important, healthy pages, delaying indexing, and potentially impacting your rankings.
Loss of Link Equity
Inbound links from other websites are also a major ranking factor. If these links are pointing to a broken page on your site, the “link juice” or “PageRank” from those valuable backlinks will be lost. This can directly impact your website’s authority and visibility in search engines.
Low Trust and Authority
A website that is riddled with broken links can appear unmaintained or unprofessional to both users and search engines. This will further diminish trust and your site’s authority in your niche.
Internal Linking Issues
Broken internal links will prevent users and search engine crawlers from navigating your site effectively. This will result in “orphan pages” (pages not linked from anywhere else on your site), which are harder for search engines to discover and index.
How to Identify Broken Links and Fix Broken Links Without Losing SEO Value
The first thing you need to do while dealing with broken links is to identify them. For that, you need to follow the following methods:
Using Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is always the first port of call. While using this tool, you need to go to the “Indexing” icon, then go to the “Pages” section. GSC will list “Not Found(404)” errors it has discovered during its crawls.
This shows you broken internal links that Google has encountered. While it won’t show you all broken links(especially the external ones), it is a great starting point for internal issues.
Website Crawlers/Auditors
There are various SEO tools that are dedicated and invaluable for a comprehensive scan. Some popular options you can opt for include:
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This desktop-based tool will crawl your website like a search engine and identify all broken internal and external links. It offers a detailed report, including the source of the broken link.
- Ahrefs Site Audit: Ahrefs is a cloud-based tool that performs a thorough site audit, flagging broken links among many other SEO issues.
- SEMRush Site Audit: Just like Ahrefs, SEMRush offers a robust site audit feature that recognizes and categorizes broken links.
- Moz Pro Site Crawl: Moz also offers a site crawl that reports on broken links and other technical SEO problems in your website.
Also Read: Benefits of White Hat SEO
Online Broken Link Checkers
If you want to run a quick scan, there are free online tools available. However, they might not be as comprehensive or effective in their job as compared to dedicated crawlers for larger sites. Examples include Dead Link Checker and Dr. Link Checker.
Manual Checks
If your site is smaller in size, you can manually click through your link. However, this approach is impractical and ineffective for sites that are significantly larger.
Prioritize and Analyze
Internal broken links are generally more essential to fix immediately as they directly impact crawlability and link equity within your site. Furthermore, you should pay close attention to broken links originating from high-authority pages on your site. Fixing these links will have a better positive impact.
Additionally, if a broken page was previously receiving traffic, fixing that page is even more essential to avoid disappointing users.
Now, after identifying the broken links, you need to fix them in a strategic manner to recover and even improve your SEO value. Here’s how you can do the same:
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Fixing Strategies
You should update your internal links. IF the content has simply moved to a new URL within your site, you need to update the broken link on the referring page to point to the correct, new URL. This is the most effective yet simple solution.
If the page has permanently moved or if you have deleted a page or replaced it with similar content elsewhere, you need to implement a 301(permanent) redirect from the old, broken URL to the new, relevant URL.
This is essential for preserving link equity. Many content management systems like WordPress have plugins that make it convenient.
Furthermore, if a significant page that was receiving traffic or links has been deleted, you need to consider recreating the content. If you do so, implement a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.
Apart from that, if the linked resource is truly gone and there is no suitable replacement, you need to remove the broken link from your page. For external links, if you find a new, relevant and authoritative resource that fulfills the original purpose of the link, replace the broken link with the new one.
Also Read: Top Guide for SEO Services Pricing Packages
To Summarize
Broken links are detrimental to the success of your website’s SEO. To avoid such a situation, you need to proactively identify and strategically fix broken links using 301 redirects, updating internal links, recreating content, and maintaining a helpful 404 page.
Furthermore, by maintaining a helpful 404 page, you will be able to safeguard and improve your website’s SEO value, enhance user experience, and ensure that your site remains a trusted and authoritative resource in the eyes of both users and search engines.