Why Dead Links are Bad and How to Fix Them?
When you create a website, you give site visitors the ability to easily navigate from one page to another using links – sometimes called hyperlinks. These links point to another page, another document on your site or to an external document.
If the document or service designated by the link is not accessible, we will speak of a broken link or a dead link
These faulty links negatively affect both the overall quality of our website and its SEO positioning and user experience and satisfaction.
The importance of detecting broken links
Broken links can occur both on our own page as well as in external links that we have cited on our site. In both cases, these links detract from the quality of our page and can penalize them at the SEO level, which will undoubtedly translate into a worse positioning of the page and, therefore, a reduction in the number of visits.
A page with broken links, something that unfortunately tends to intensify as our page grows in content and the number of referred links, is liable to suffer the following negative effects:
The user experience and satisfaction are resented since we make them waste time and we frustrate their desire to consult certain content.
These errors detract from the trust and credibility of our website, which in the case of online stores may mean a decrease in sales.
We make it difficult to index Google robots, which can make us lose positions in search results.
Google may also penalize us for considering that our page is not sufficiently revised and updated.
As administrators or owners of a website, it is obvious that we are not interested in having broken links and we must proceed to their detection, elimination or correction; a task that is complicated in complex websites and with constant updating of their content.
Fortunately, there are a number of specific tools that allow automatic detection of broken links. Let’s see the main ones.
Our recommendation of tools to detect bad links
Among all the existing online tools of this type, these are the ones that seem most recommendable for their effectiveness and ease of use:
Google Webmaster Tools: One of the many functions of this Google macro tool is the detection of broken links. To do this we just have to go to the Tracking Errors tab and remove or correct the addresses of the faulty links that come out.
W3C Link Checker: It is one of the most used and best-valued tools by web page administrators. The reasons for its success and prestige are that, in addition to guaranteeing the detection of all the broken links on our site. It greatly facilitates the correction of the problem by recommending the best solution and offering validations of our HTML code.
Webmaster Toolkit: The differential factor of this broken link detection tool is that it allows you to choose the type of link you want to analyze.
Broken Link Checker: It is a WordPress extension that notifies you, even automatically by email, of the broken links of the blogs created on said platform. The only drawback is that it consumes a lot of resources.
Dr. Link Check: This post is useful for you just because you are interested in improving the SEO of your page, so we recommend Dr. Link Check, an online tool for finding broken and malicious links on websites.
If you have identified many broken links on your website, the repair will prove to be very time-consuming. However, you will have to act carefully if you want to do your own work.
Broken links are a real problem for project developers on the web. To avoid that the best is to regularly make checks as to the possible presence of dead links on your site. Then make the necessary repairs and you will be sure that your web storefront does not suffer from a link problem.
