to Fix Broken Links

Broken links can ruin your reputation and your SEO efforts. Fortunately, they are easy to fix.

This guide will show how to fix any links that you may have, including backlinks and links in your content. I’ll show:

• Why do links ‘break?
• What they do to your site
• Semrush is a great tool to help you identify them. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial.
• How to restore your SEO efforts.

You can even get a bonus tip on how to make the broken links of your competitors work in your favor.

Are you ready to fix the links? Let’s fix those links!

Broken Links

Broken links are links that do not take you to your intended page. internal links, backlinks and external links are all broken. Broken links can be caused by a variety of factors.

What causes a link to “break”?

If you have broken links on your website, you are not alone. This is a pretty common problem, possibly because there are so many possible causes.

Have a look at:

• 
  Misspelled URL
  
  It’s obvious that if the URL is misspelled, then the link won’t work. This could be due to a typo or:
  • The URL is missing the “http ://”” or “http ://”” part.
  • 
    The URL has an extra space.
    
  • You might be linking to a page with a misspelled URL.
• Updated url As previously mentioned, you may have decided to update the URL of one of your web pages to remove a typo. You may have to fix broken links if you did not set up redirects before making the changes. This includes internal and backlinks that point to the incorrect, old URL. You may have an external link that has been changed by the site you are linking to.
• Loss of Pages: This is a rarer cause than the previous ones, but it can happen if your website has been migrated.
• Geolocation or Firewall Restrictions : The link may not be broken for everyone but only accessible in certain areas of the world. You’ve probably seen the YouTube error “This video does not exist in your country”. Content is sometimes blocked globally to comply with local law.
• Moved content: If the video or document has been removed from the server, or moved elsewhere, your link may be broken.
• Malfunctioning Plug-Ins: Links might not work because of plugins that are malfunctioning on your website, or HTML or JavaScript errors causing page elements to break.
• The site is down: It can be affecting all types of links, depending on whether your site or the external site is down. It’s possible that if you have a broken external link (or an inbound link), the site to which you are linking (or from which you link) is also down. If NO links are working on your site, then your site may be down. It’s not necessary for me to tell that this is a problem you need to fix ASAP to avoid a loss of traffic and ranking.
• Change to URL Structure If you have recently changed your URL structure but not implemented 301 redirects then your internal and external links will break. For example, if you’re changing https://www.example.com/product-name to
  
  https://www.example.com/products/category/product-name
  
  Set up 301 redirects so that users and search engines land on the correct page after clicking a link.

There are many types of broken links

You’ll often get a 404 Not Found error if you click on a broken link. The 404 error is a generic message that the page may not be available at this time, but will return later.

However, it’s not just the 4xx status code which indicates a broken hyperlink:

• 400 bad request: This occurs when the host server does not understand the URL of your page. This is usually caused by a syntax mistake or invalid request. If you want to link to the page URL
  
  https://www.example.com/products/product123
  
  But instead, you use
  
  https://www.example.com/products/product123/
  
  You’ll get a 400 error if you try to follow a link.
• Gone This error is similar to the 404 error in that it indicates the resource to which you’re linking is no longer on the server. A 410, however, is different from a standard 404, which says that “we’re not certain if this page will ever be available again.”

As I will show you, 404, 400 and 410 errors can all negatively impact both the user experience and search engine optimization. Search engines could treat 410 errors even worse than 400 and 404 errors, since they are an indication of permanently deleted content.

Broken Links: Dangerous!

Google considers internal linking a ranking factor. So you don’t have to be told that they are important.

This spiral effect can be caused by broken internal links on your website.

A user who clicks on an error page will be redirected to one of those listed above. It’s the worst possible thing to happen while you visit a website, right?

It’s not surprising that people will often leave your site to find the information they are looking for elsewhere.

We don’t want visitors to our website to be unhappy, but this could do more harm than we think. If they have a bad experience on your website, they may not return again. This could damage your reputation.

Google allocates crawl budget.

The crawl budget is the time that crawlers spend on a page. You don’t want them to waste time on your entire site, so make sure the most important pages are as easy as possible for crawlers.

Internal links can be used to send Googlebots to other pages of your website, helping them better understand the structure of your site and indexing pages. Broken internal links are just as detrimental to Googlebot’s crawling of your site as the absence of internal links.

Bottom line, if you don’t index your pages, they won’t rank. All that work you put into creating an amazing piece of content won’t get you results (rankings and traffic) if Google cannot find it and index.

Not only that, but there’s more.

Remember those unhappy users that I mentioned earlier? They’re leaving your site faster than they can say “broken link,” increasing your bounce rate, and reducing the time spent on your site.

This is a big red flag to Google. Why do people leave your pages so fast? Your content is it bad and irrelevant to their search?

Broken internal links can also have indirect effects on the SEO of your site. Broken external links and inbound hyperlinks can have direct effects on your SEO, as they tell Google that you site is not up-to-date and has been neglected.

How?

It would appear that your content has become outdated if you link to many pages that were removed. If you have many broken links, it’s possible that webmasters are linking to more recent and better pages than yours.

There are also 400 other errors that can be found on a website, which Google considers to be a sign of poor maintenance. They also affect the indexing and crawling by search engines.

You can now see how important it is to take care of your links.

Next, I will show you exactly what it is.

Find broken links

You need to locate broken links before you can fix them (if you have any on your website).

You don’t need to manually check each link in your domain to see if it’s broken. You can use a variety of tools to check the health of your inbound, external and internal links.

Semrush Site Audit and Backlink Audit are two tools I recommend. Use Screaming Frog SEO Spider, SEO PowerSuite Link Assistant or Broken Link Checker.

Budget? Google Analytics can be used to find broken links.

This demonstration will show you how to find broken links using Google Analytics 4, as Universal Analytics, the previous generation of Google Analytics, is set to be phased-out on July 1, 2023.

Go to “Reports” first. Click “Engagement”, on the left side of the page, then select “Pages and Screens” from the menu.

Scroll down the page to find all of your URLs.

Type “page not located”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “404”, “whatever your error pages normally are titled”.

Select “page title and Screen Class” from the dropdown menu beneath the search bar. As shown below, you also need to select the secondary dimension “page class and path”, as well.

Searching this will show you your 404 error page (if any), as well as pages that link to the broken pages.

Note If Google Analytics says “No data available” after you select “Page path or screen class”, then you can create your own report in Google Analytics 4.

If you get a lot of 404 error messages, I recommend exporting the data into a spreadsheet. You can then easily check which links are broken and mark them as you fix them.

Google Search Console: How to check for broken links

Google Search Console can be used to identify broken links. Google Search Console is free.

After logging into GSC select or add the property that you want to check for broken links.

Click on “Pages”, which is located on the left side of the page.

Scroll down to the bottom section of this page, “Why pages aren’t indexed”, and click “Not Found” (404), as shown below.

The 404 error will then appear in your domain.

These are the pages Google cannot find, and that users cannot see.

Clicking on a link will take you to the next step. A window on the right side should then appear. Click “Inspect URL”.

The data Google holds on the link will be displayed, as shown below:

You can now see why the link is leading to a 404 page and what you can do about it.

Semrush can help you find broken internal and external links

Google Analytics 4 provides some information on broken links but it is not as complete as Semrush’s Site Audit Tool.

Site Audit is available by adding the website that you wish to analyze in Semrush as a project.

After you have run the audit of your site, click on the “Issues tab”.

You can search for “broken” instead of scrolling all the issues.

You can check for broken links in “Errors” as shown below.

You can also check the external links on your page by clicking “Warnings”.

There are no external or internal links that I need to fix.

If you do find that you have problems, you can click the error number (for example “3 internal hyperlinks”) to find out what is wrong.

You can export the data into an Excel or CSV spreadsheet if you have a lot of errors.

How to find broken backlinks

Broken backlinks, or incoming links that come from other domains, occur when a site links to a page of yours that is broken or has disappeared.

Semrush Backlink Audit Tool can be used to find broken links.

The main dashboard will show you how many broken links you have after you run a backlink audit. Here’s an example:

Click on the “Target Pages tab” for more information:

Click the “target URL error” checkbox:

This will reduce the number of URLs that you can choose from.

Click on the blue highlighted active keyword number next to the URL Target Page URLs.

Then, you can review and see all of the links that lead to a page with an error on your website.

Encourage user feedback and reporting

It’s not possible to expect you to fix all of the broken links by yourself.

You should be responsible for the majority. Some may, however, slip through your grasp.

Broken links create a negative user experience. You can ask users to notify you if they find any broken links in your domain. The users will know you are doing your best to make a website that is user-friendly.

It is best to create your own 404 error page with a contact form. You could also provide information on how users can report broken links, for example, an email address.

Fixing Broken Links

It’s now time to fix your broken links. You’ll need to follow slightly different steps depending on if you are fixing broken links within your website (internal links and external links) OR to your site.

What you can do to stop them

Internal and External Links

As a webmaster you have control over two types of external and internal links.

It’s time to fix any internal/external linkages you have identified.

You can fix broken links in three different ways: redirects, updating or removing them.

Update or remove

Updating fixes the problem the easiest. If there is a typographical error in the URL you simply need to replace it with the correct URL. The link will then work as expected. This method will only work if the link was broken due to a mispelled URL!

The link can also be removed by. Remove the link if it is no longer required. You may have updated the content of the page that contains the link, or the page to which it is linked.

Inserting a redirect 301

The most complex fix is to insert a redirect. However, it may be the best solution for SEO.

If you have moved a webpage, or if you no longer sell a particular product or service but still offer a similar one on another page, you should use a redirect.

If, for example, one of your broken hyperlinks is supposed to direct users to a product you no longer carry, you can use a 301 redirection to send them to a similar item that you do carry. You will no longer need to worry about broken links.

You shouldn’t use a 301 if your situation does not match either of the examples above. A 301 to a page that is irrelevant can hurt your rankings and ruin the user experience.

Clicking on something and being taken to another page is annoying.

If you find that your situation fits the examples above, then you can use a redirection plug-in, such as RankMath, to insert a 301 on WordPress. You can also insert 301 redirects using PHP, Nginx or.htaccess. A 301 redirect has the benefit that it will pass most of your ranking power to the new page.

Please note that 301 redirections are permanent unlike 302 redirections.

Before you add one, make sure you want to permanently redirect users to that location. Use a 302 instead if you intend to restore the original page in the future.

Broken External Links

External links that lead nowhere are useless and add no value to the content.

You can either replace the link with an active one, or remove it completely.

Check that you have typed the link correctly. A 404 error page can be triggered by an extra letter, digit or dash. Copy and paste the URL again to make sure it is accurate.

You should remove the external link if you discover that the page to which you linked no longer exists. What if that external link was of significant value to your website? It could be a source of information for your copy, such as facts and figures.

You would then need to find an alternative and replace the external links with that. You may find the information you require elsewhere. If you don’t need it, remove the section.

Backlinks

You’ll need to ask the webmaster of the domain that you are linking to to update your broken link.

It’s easy to do, you just need to send them an email, but make sure that it is worded correctly.

Here are some tips on how to write the perfect email.

1. The Greeting If you know the name of the recipient, please use it!
2. Introduction: Identify yourself and your website by name.
3. The Problem: Tell the recipient which page of their website you are referring to, and what link is broken.
4. Solution : Give them the URL that you want to link to.
5. Benefit. Of course you are doing this primarily for yourself, but broken links can also be harmful to a website. In order to help the webmaster’s SEO, you should explain how fixing the broken links on their website will benefit them.
6. Keep It Short No one wants to read an email that is more like an essay. You only need a few simple and short paragraphs to cover the points above.
7. Be patient Website owners are very busy, so please give them some time to reply to your email. Do not be afraid to send a follow-up email in case the website owner missed your message. However, please refrain from spamming their inbox every day for three weeks.

Maintaining your links regularly and monitoring them

Broken links can cause a lot of damage to your website. It’s no surprise you should check them regularly.

Semrush’s Site Audit can be set to run automatically daily or weekly on a date of your choice, instead of only once. This way you won’t have to remember to do it. You can also choose to receive the audit report via email every time it is completed.

Weekly is fine if you don’t have a large site. You can quickly detect any broken links, and fix them before they cause any harm to your rankings or UX.

You’ll need to regularly check the quality of your backlinks and whether they are still active.

Bonus Tip: Broken Link Building

Remember how I said I would show you how to use broken links for your benefit? Here it is: Broken Link Building.

This is an excellent link-building technique. It allows you to take advantage of broken links from your competitors AND give the webmasters a useful page to link to.

If you want to identify broken links on your competitor’s site, just use the tool with their domain instead of yours.

When you find a great opportunity, contact the webmaster to suggest that they link to your site on the same subject instead. You just stole some link juice away from your competitor.

Sources:

How to Fix broken internal links

Semrush Find and fix broken links with Semrush

How To Find And Fix Broken Links (5 Methods).

How to find and fix broken links on your website

How to Find Broken Links and Broken Backlinks that Hurt Your SEO [OSEO08]

https://medium.com/designer-recipes/how-to-make-a-custom-404-error-page-for-your-website-1af37a8b20d1

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/custom-404-page-wordpress/466665/

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