How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website
I’m sure you’ve worked very hard and long hours to make your website a useful resource for your visitors if you have one. However, all of your hard work might be for nought if your links need to be fixed. Your website’s broken links might be damaging in two different ways.
- They lead to a poor user experience — Users become annoyed and may never click on links again when encountering 404 errors.
- They diminish the value of your SEO efforts — Broken links prevent link equity from flowing freely throughout your site, which has a detrimental effect on rankings.
You should scan your website for broken links to avoid these possible dangers. You’re just one of many who are still determining how to proceed. The good news is that we have already completed this job and have recorded everything in a clear, step-by-step procedure that you will find useful. Here is a detailed tutorial to assist you in identifying and fixing broken links on your website.
Find Broken Links
If you know all the locations where the broken links appear on your website, you can export the report from Broken Link Finder into a spreadsheet and update them, or you may set up redirects to take visitors to the correct page. The 404 error page will be displayed for any links that are either dead or broken. Although most websites offer a straightforward message, it’s a great practice to urge the user to take action. A link to your home page, blog site, or contact page is an acceptable inclusion.
Create A Report And Track Your Changes
Make an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of link redirection procedures after you’ve located your broken links. Name it “Broken Link Redirect Report,” for example. By selecting Export — CSV for Excel at the top of the page in Google Analytics, you may download the report you just prepared. Copy and paste the data columns for broken links, page views, and unique page views into the Excel spreadsheet you just made because these are the only ones we need for our needs.
Analyze Data And Decide Which Pages Should Be Redirected
We now reach the crucial phase after all the preparation. We can quickly determine the proper URL for certain connections and enter the information in the spreadsheet. For other links, we can insert a provisional URL and highlight it in a different colour. For the remaining links, we can redirect to the domain homepage. Finally, we will only reroute the URLs with a lot of traffic or an underlying error-causing rule. Once you’ve identified the links that require redirection and listed them in your Broken Link Redirect Report, you can go on to the next step.
Redirect in CMS
The broken links in your content management system must be redirected at this point (CMS). The goal was attained!
Now that ALL of your links are functional and your website is pleasing to both people and search engines, you can be even prouder! Use My SEO Tools, the best Broken Link Finder tool to fulfil your every SEO need. Visit the website now!