How to Find & Fix Broken Links On Your Website?

Get ready to fix your website broken links with this comprehensive guide. Read more!

How to Find & Fix Broken Links On Your Website?

Get ready to fix your website broken links with this comprehensive guide. Read more!

Learning how to fix broken links is important to maintaining a successful website because having broken links on your site is terrible for both your SEO and human visitors.

We’ll go into more detail in this piece on why it’s important to look for and fix broken links. Next, we’ll walk you through five distinct techniques for identifying and fixing broken links on your website without slowing down your site.

The Dangers of Broken Links

There are various reasons why broken links are detrimental to your website.
The impact on your human visitors comes first. When someone clicks on a link, it’s usually because they are interested in the material that the link is supposed to lead them to. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

Therefore, you’re making your visitors’ experience frustrating by directing them to a broken link instead of the content you promised them, and that in and of itself is an excellent incentive to detect and restore broken links on your site. However, broken links are detrimental to machines as well as people. in particular, the crawler bots that Google and other search engines employ.

Broken links, first of all, waste your crawl equity in Google. Any 404 page that a Googlebot could have crawled instead is a live page that it finds as a result of broken links. Furthermore, faulty links are a waste of link equity. For instance, your SEO efforts would suffer if an internal link between two blog posts is broken because you won’t be receiving the SEO benefit of that internal link.

5 Ways How to Fix Broken Links

Alright, so broken links harm your website. It’s now time to address the crucial query: how can broken links be fixed?

Find Broken Links with Xenu

This is one of the tool’s primary applications. Just launch the application, navigate to your homepage, and select the “Skip External” option. After that, a report with a list of any broken links will be provided. By selecting “File,” then “Export to TAB separated file,” you may also export this report into Microsoft Excel.

Here are the steps to check your site with Xenu:

1. With Xenu running, select File and then Check URL…

2. Enter URL in the field provided. Check the Check external links check box. Click the OK button.

3. Optional: Change the view option to see only broken links by clicking View and then Show broken links only.

4. When Xenu is done checking the site for broken links. Click on the Yes button to generate a report.

5. On the next screen, click on the Cancel button to get the final report.

Here is an example of the final report:

The report will show you the broken link and the page where the broken link appears. Simply open your site, find the page with the broken link, and make the necessary repair. Your repair may be one of many options:

ü Remove the link

ü Research the link and update the link to the correct one. Web developers may have restructured their site causing the broken links.

ü Write the website owner and let them know about the broken link. They may not be aware of a problem.

Fixing a broken link is not a complicated task, but it is important to the health of your site.

Find Broken Links with Screaming Frog

You can examine your website for broken links (the http response “404 not found error”) with the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, which is available for both free and paid use.

A brief and simple instruction on using the program as a broken link checker may be found below. To begin with, you must download the SEO Spider, which can crawl up to 500 URLs for free. The green button in the right-side bar allows you to download. More than 500 URLs can be crawled using the premium edition. See our tutorial and video below for the following steps to identify broken links on your website.

Crawl The Website

2. Click the ‘Response Codes’ Tab & ‘Client Error (4XX)’ Filter to View Broken Links

3. View the Source of the Broken Links by Clicking the ‘Inlinks’ Tab

4. Use the ‘Bulk Export > Response Codes > Client Error (4XX) Inlinks’ Export

5. Find Broken ‘Jump Links’

Find Broken Links with the Ahrefs

It’s time to fix your broken links once you’ve located them. Whether you’re repairing broken links to your website (backlinks) or on your website (internal and external links), the procedure varies slightly.

Here’s what you can do in response to them with Ahrefs:

Find Broken Links with the Ahrefs Audit Tool

The first way to find broken links in Ahrefs is to use their amazing Site audit tool. Just create a new project, enter the address of your website, and let it to scan it. This could take about twenty minutes, depending on how big your site is.

You may view a comprehensive list of all 404 problems on your website by clicking on the reports area once the scan is finished. The broken links on your website and the internal pages they are displaying will then be visible to you. Next, replace the broken links with the working ones.

Find Broken Links with Ahrefs Site Explorer

The Ahrefs Site Explorer is another tool you can use to identify broken links. To view the strongest broken backlinks pointing to your website, just enter the URL of your website into Ahrefs Site Explorer, select the “Backlinks” report, and select “Broken. “Alternatively, you can apply the “404 not found” filter in “HTTP codes” under the “Best by links” report.

Find Broken Outgoing Links with Ahrefs Site Explorer

The top priority should be giving your website’s internal broken backlinks some TLC. However, keep in mind that outgoing links can break. Users find it annoying when links to broken resources or information on other people’s websites. Excellent outbound link building is significant for your SEO.

To begin, enter your website URL into Ahrefs Site Explorer, select “Broken links” under the “Outgoing links” report. The broken external link and the article or page on your website where the link is located are then visible to you.

Find Broken Links with Sitechecker Website Audit

There are four primary sections for each of the issues:

The Warnings and Criticals affect your website’s score.

Criticals: (The problems that directly and significantly affect your SEO)

Warnings (problems that may affect your SEO, but are not as important as critical issues)

In the Sitechecker app, the Notifications and Opportunities have no bearing on your website’s score.

Notices (These are not so much issues as suggestions. They may assist you in optimizing your website, enhancing user experience, and formatting it in accordance with general guidelines.

Possibilities (These audits are designed to further enhance the website and refine the appearance of your pages and user experience).

Furthermore, the categories listed below will assist you in sorting and understanding all of the problems according to how they affect the website.

Along with that, there is a quick statistic with the percentage of the affected URLs by each category.

It will take less than two minutes to verify 300 links on your website; all you have to do is input your domain and sign up for a free 14-day trial (no credit card needed).

Following the scan, URLs with 4xx status that point to additional pages on your website will be discovered by our crawler. This will assist you in resolving the broken link issue across the board and determining whether additional broken links will surface.

When you click on the issue, a list of URLs with the issue, a button to look for broken internal links, and troubleshooting instructions appear.

Find Broken Links with Google Search Console

Google provides you with useful tools to “monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results” using Google Search Console. You must use Google Search Console to validate your website before you can proceed. After that, you may begin utilizing its features, such as the ability to detect broken links.

Google Search Console has a Crawl Errors report that allows you to view all the pages that gave Google a 404 error as part of its functionality:

When you click on any of those links, a popup window will appear, allowing you to fix any broken links on those pages and seeing which pages connect to the 404-error page.

Googlebot, Google Search Console’s potent crawler, is in charge. In the process of fulfilling its goal of offering thorough and insightful site reports, it excels at identifying broken links.

But how is that accomplished? Let’s dissect it using the following methodical approach:

Step 1: Launch the Google search console tool, then choose from the dashboard the property (website) that you want.

Step 2: Navigate to the section on coverage: Click the ‘Pages’ option from the menu on the left. The faults, cautions, and exclusions that Google found when crawling your website are displayed in this feature. Search for Error.

Step 3: Look Detailed Examine: The Error section will list any loaded pages with crawler issues. This is where your useful data about broken links is located. ‘404 errors’ specifically relate to broken links. The listed URLs must be fixed since Googlebot has deemed them non-existent.

Broken links or “404 errors” are more than just minor inconveniences. If not addressed promptly, these could harm your website’s SEO performance, disrupt the user experience and potentially decrease your site’s ranking in Google search results.

Find Broken Link with WordPress Plugin

For checking that every link on your WordPress website is operational, the AIOSEO Broken Link Checker plugin is a vital resource. It checks your website on a regular basis for broken links, including external and internal connections that return a 404 error.

It isn’t going to slow down your website like some other WordPress plugins that check for broken links because it is designed as a SaaS service. Because it uses an external private server to ping for broken links, managed WordPress hosting providers like WP Engine won’t block it either.

Installing and activating the Broken Link Checker plugin is the first step.

Upon activation, the Broken Link Checker Setup Wizard will start automatically to help you set up your account.

You have the option to link to an existing plan or create a free account on the following page.

Just click the “Create a Free Account” button to start a new, free account. Your name, phone number, and email address must be entered. When you surpass the 200 free links allotted, you will also be required to provide your payment card information in order to receive an upgrade.

You can select the ‘Connect to an Existing Account’ button if you have previously purchased the Pro edition. Clicking the “Connect” link next to your plan will need you to sign into your account.

At this point, the plugin will begin searching your posts, pages, and custom post types for links in the background. To see the complete report, select the ‘Broken’ tab. The links are divided into three categories: broken, redirected, and ignored.

If you have been running your WordPress blog for a long time, then this report will include broken links to third-party websites as well.

You can quickly fix any broken links right inside of the SEO plugin by clicking the ‘Edit URL’ link. Or, you can remove the link by clicking ‘Unlink.’ Once you are finished, don’t forget to click the ‘Update’ button.

Broken Link Checker will also give you ‘Status Details’ about each link when you click the Information ⓘ icon. The information displayed includes how long the link has been broken, its HTTP status code, response headers, and more.

The plugin’s Settings tab lets you control which post types (posts, pages, custom post types) and statuses (published, draft) you want to monitor or exclude. Broken Link Checker by AIOSEO will automatically scan your site every 3 days, so you won’t have to worry about broken links in the future.

Note: In most cases, we do not advise utilizing a plugin to check for broken links because they can significantly impair the functionality of your website. It is far better from a performance standpoint to assign these responsibilities to a different tool using any of the aforementioned techniques.

FAQ's

Can Google Analytics find broken links?

Yes, Google Analytics can be used to find broken links on a website. Here's how: Log in to Google Analytics, Select the Behavior tab, Select Site Content, Select All Pages, Set the time range for the month since your most recent check, click on Page title and Type "not found" into the search filter.

Do broken links hurt SEO?

Yes, broken links can negatively impact your website's SEO in several ways like Site quality, Crawl errors

Wasted link authority, User experience as broken links can create a poor user experience, which can frustrate users and may cause them to never return. Search engines prioritize user experience, so sites with frequent errors like broken links may be ranked lower.

Does SEMrush find broken links?

Yes, Semrush's Site Audit tool can find broken internal and external links on a website. It can also provide insights into the health of external links that point to a competitor's site.

Final Words

Broken links seriously compromise user experience and search engine optimization efforts on your website. In addition to frustrating users by not providing the promised material, broken links waste crawl and link equity and negatively impact your site’s search engine ranking on search engines like Google. There are efficient methods for locating and fixing broken links without affecting the functionality of the website. Website owners can effectively find and resolve broken links by using web-based SEO audit tools, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Screaming frog, Xenu, or even (with caution) plugins like the Broken Link Checker for WordPress.

These techniques give website managers the power to improve user experience, uphold SEO integrity, and guarantee that their material is still important and accessible to both search engine crawlers and human users.

Website owners can reduce the risks posed by broken links and build a stronger online presence by putting these tactics into practice.

Read this blog for more detail: How to check toxic backlinks