A broken link, also known as a dead link, is a link on a webpage that is no longer accessible or can’t be found by a user. When a user tries to access a broken link, they are met with a “404 not found” error. This is a frustrating experience and a signal to search engines that your website is not well-maintained.
Broken links are a common problem that can happen for a few reasons: a webpage might have been moved or deleted, the URL might have been mistyped, or an external site that you linked to might be offline.
Do Broken Links Hurt SEO?
Yes, they do. Broken links can hurt your SEO in a few key ways.
- Poor User Experience: Landing on a broken page is frustrating. Users will quickly leave your site, which can increase your bounce rate and lower your time on page. These are both signals to search engines that your website is not high-quality.
- Wasted Crawl Budget: Search engines have a limited amount of time to crawl your website. If they are spending their time crawling broken links, they are wasting their time and resources. This can prevent them from crawling and indexing your important pages.
- Lost Link Equity: If an important page has a broken link pointing to it, the “link juice” or SEO value from that link is lost. This can directly hurt your page’s ability to rank.
A professional SEO platform Clickrank can help you with this. The platform’s can scan your website for these issues and give you a prioritized list of tasks to fix them.
How to Find Broken Links on Your Website
The easiest way to find broken links is to use a broken link checker tool. These tools will crawl your website and identify all the broken links for you. You can also use a few different methods to find them manually:
- Google Search Console: Your search console’s Pages report can show you which of your pages have 404 errors. This is a great way to find internal broken links.
- Google Analytics 4: You can create a custom report in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to find out which links on your website result in a 404 error page.
How to Fix Broken Links
Once you have a list of all the broken links on your website, you need to fix them. You have a few options:
Method 1: Update the Link
If a broken link is an internal link, the best way to fix it is to update the link to the correct URL. This is a simple and effective way to ensure that your users and search engines can always find your content.
Method 2: Create a 301 Redirect
If a broken link is a backlink from another website, or if you have deleted a page, you can create a 301 redirect. This is a permanent redirect that sends a user and a search engine from an old URL to a new one. It is a great way to fix a broken link and preserve your SEO value.
Method 3: Remove the Link
If a broken link is an external link to a page that no longer exists, you should remove the link from your website. There is no point in having a link to a page that a user can’t access.
What is a broken link?
A broken link is a link that leads to a page that no longer exists, which results in a 404 error.
Why are broken links bad for SEO?
Broken links are bad for SEO because they create a poor user experience, waste a search engine's crawl budget, and can lead to lost link equity.
How do I find broken links on my site?
You can find broken links by using a broken link checker tool or by creating a custom report in Google Analytics 4.
A do-follow backlink is a link that tells search engines to follow the link and pass on SEO value.
