How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website

Broken links are links on your website that do not work anymore. When a user clicks on such a link, it leads to an error page instead of useful content. This not only creates frustration for visitors, but it also reduces trust in your brand. Search engines also see broken links as a sign of poor site care. Fixing broken links is very important in order to maintain your website and for its long-term search growth.

What Are Broken Links

A broken link usually appears when a page cannot be found or loaded. This often happens when a page is removed or its address is changed without updating the link. Sometimes, external websites remove those pages where you were previously linked. Typing mistakes in URLs can also create broken links. Over time, even well-managed websites can have many broken links if they are not checked regularly.

Why Broken Links Affect SEO

Broken links can severely affect your search performance in many ways. Search engines send crawlers to follow links and discover content. When a crawler finds many broken links, it may reduce its visits to your site. Users who land on error pages by following broken links often leave quickly, which increases bounce rate. These signals can reduce your website’s rankings and overall authority.  You must keep your links healthy so that both users and search engines trust your site.

Manual Ways to Find Broken Links

For small websites, it is possible to find broken links by checking pages manually. You can click menu links, footer links and links inside popular blog posts. This method will help you understand your site structure better. However, it takes time, and there are also chances that you can miss out on some hidden issues. But when your website starts growing, manual checks become less practical and less accurate.

Using a free SEO audit tool to Detect Issues

A free SEO audit tool makes it easy to find broken links without manual work. You simply enter your website address and start the scan. The tool will crawl every single page of your website and report links that return errors. It also shows which pages contain those broken links. When you know the reason behind broken links, you can easily fix them. A free SEO audit tool is ideal for beginners and small businesses because it saves time and gives clear reports that are easy to understand.

Common Types of Broken Link Errors

When you scan your site, you may see different types of errors. The most common one is a page not found error, which means that the given page no longer exists. Server errors can appear when a page fails to load due to hosting issues. Redirect problems may occur when a link points to another broken link. You need to first understand the error type, and once you are aware, you can easily fix it. Just make sure that the issues don’t repeat.

How to Fix Broken Internal Links

Internal links connect pages within your own website. These links should be fixed first because they are under your full control. You can update the link so it can point to the correct page or restore the missing content if it is still useful. In some cases, redirecting the old page to a new one is the best option. After making these changes, make sure to test the link again to confirm it works.

How to Handle Broken External Links

External links point to other websites which are not under your control. If an external page is removed, you should replace the link with a similar and reliable source. If there is no good alternative, then you must remove the link entirely. Keeping external links updated improves content quality and protects users from dead ends.

Also Read: What are backlinks and why are they important 

Monitoring Links with an SEO audit tool

An SEO audit tool will help you monitor broken links on a regular basis. It can scan your website automatically and alert you if it finds a broken link. This allows you to fix problems before they affect users or rankings. It is the most effective way to find out and fix broken links. By using an SEO audit tool, you can easily check broken links on large websites. Once you understand the issue, fixing it will hardly take any time.

Best Practices to Prevent Broken Links

Preventing broken links is easier than fixing them later. Avoid changing page addresses unless it is very necessary. Always update links when your content is moved. Test links before publishing new pages. You need to review old content from time to time to ensure that all links are still valid and working properly. 

Final Thoughts

Broken links may seem like a small issue, but they are not. They can have a big impact on user experience and search visibility. You need to find them and fix them in order to improve your website’s quality and build trust with visitors. For this, you need to check links on a regular basis using the right SEO audit tool. This way, you can make sure that your website performs well over time.