How to check your site for broken links

Now I don’t know about you, but running a blog is a bit more than just throwing together a blog post and a couple of images. I wish it was that easy! But there’s a lot more work that goes into building a successful blog. And a lot of that is focused on SEO. You can’t deny that SEO is a long-game. And while there are a lot of factors that contribute to your site’s SEO. One of the easiest ways to keep on top of it and ensure your readers have a great customer experience. Is by checking the deadlinks on your site. Now if you’re not sure what a deadlink is. Or even how to check your site for them. Then don’t worry. Here is how to check your site for broken links.

WHY SHOULD YOU FIX BROKEN LINKS ON YOUR SITE?

So let’s start with the basics. Fixing deadlinks on your site allows for:

• A better user experience for your readers. They won’t be frustrated by reaching a 404 page or not finding the page that they want. Plus is makes your site appear more professional as every link leads to a page.
• A better flow of traffic and a lower bounce rate. If your reader clicks on a link to your site from somewhere else and they reach a 404 page. Chances are they’re clicking straight off your site. Which increases your bounce rate and loses you traffic.
• An SEO boost. OK so this isn’t 100% proven by Google but fixing broken links improves the overall experience of your site for a user. And if someone has a good experience they’re likely to share it. Which in turn would boost your SEO ranking and send more traffic your way.

HOW TO FIND BROKEN LINKS

When looking for broken links. You need to look for both broken internal links. So links between the pages on your site. And external ones. The links from other sites linking back to you. Both are important and both should be fixed ASAP. So here are some of the more popular ways to fix broken links.

OPTION ONE: USE GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE

For this option, you need to log into Google Search Console and choose your site. Head to crawl > crawl errors and you’ll see a lit of 404 error from both internal and incoming links.

To fix the broken link, just click on the URL and view the pop-up window for more info. You can then click the Linked From tab to see a list of all the places that broken link is used on your site.

OPTION TWO: USE BROKEN LINK CHECKER WORDPRESS PLUGIN

For this option, you need to find the Broken Link Checker Plugin and install it. Once it’s installed and activated go to Settings > Link Checker to customise your options. You can have email notifications, choose where you want to scan for broken links etc.

You can then start the plugins to being scanning your site. Depending on the size of your site this could take some time. Your results will then be available in Tools > Broken Links.

From here you can fix the broken links right there within the page. It’s a great plugin but I found that it did conflict with some of my other installed plugins which is why I personally prefer to use option three.

OPTION THREE: USE AN ONLINE BROKEN LINK CHECKER

For this option you’ll be using the online Broken Link Check site. Add your URL and select ‘Report all occurrences of each dead link’ and then click the search button. Again depending on how big your site is will depend on how long the check will take.

But once it’s done, you’ll have a list of all the instances of broken links on your site. You can then just click the URL under ‘page where found’ to bring you to the page with the error. And click ‘src’ to find the source code of where the error is.

HOW TO FIX BROKEN LINKS

So you’ve found the broken links. Well done, now comes the task of fixing them! There are a couple of options you have when it comes to fixing broken links. You can choose to:

• Correct the link – I find that a lot of my broken links are down to not having http:// at the beginning of the link. If that’s the case, then it’s a quick fix to correct the broken link
• Replace the link – now if the URL has been altered due to a new domain or the blog post no longer exists. Then you need to replace the URL with the correct link
• Remove the link – if the site you’ve linked to no longer exists or the page has been removed with no suitable alternative to link to. Then just remove the link completely
• Redirect the link – if you’ve changed your URL then you want to ensure you have redirects set up so the old URL redirect new visitors to the correct link. You can use the Redirect Plugin on WordPress to do this.

So there you have it. That’s how to check your site for broken links. Now I know it’s a tedious task. But honestly if you keep on top of it every month then it really isn’t that bad. Let me know in the comments if you’ve got any other questions on how to check your site for broken links.