How Broken Links Impacts Website SEO Plus The Best Error Fixing Tools

13 min readOct 24, 2022

Basically, Broken Links on your website pages or blog posts have a huge effect on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). And whether you own a professional website or just have a personal website, you wouldn’t want your sites to have broken links. The good news is that to verify broken links, and site availability, there’re a lot of link testing tools in the market.

And often, which does an easy job of checking and making our web life easy. Bearing in mind, weblink testing is the testing of a group of modules to ensure that they operate correctly in combination. It is normally performed after the individual modules have been tested in isolation. And prior to the integration testing that is performed for the complete system.

Simply put, web testing refers to checking your website for possible bugs that may hinder the performance of various website functions. Whereby, testing is essential before moving the code into the actual production environment. Of course, you too are trying to figure out what tools are best for testing broken web links. If so, guess you have likely done some research.

And, you already know that there are a lot of options. From complex Java log parser tools to other tools that are much more simple in design. And as such free logging tools too. Before we tell you how broken links can affect your overall website content SEO audit strategy, you can check on the best link-testing tools to gather more useful and related details.

In general, Broken Links are such webpage URLs, when navigating through which the server gives the answer “the page does not exist or is not found.” Meaning, that the link, document, or image requested by the user may not really exist or may be “dead.” Due to a malfunction error, server error, or even a site configuration error. There are a variety of links to consider.

Local Links: A page on the same server or directory
Internal Links: A section on the current page or document
External Links: A page or site on a different server or directory
Download Links: A file for the visitor to download
Email Links: Opens the visitor’s e-mail program

Chiefly, links are used to “link” a website visitor from one area to another (whether it’s a standalone page, a landing page, or even a blog post). With this in mind, the task of every webmaster and site owner is to ensure that there are no links to non-existing pages, documents, and files on the site, both external and internal.

In other words, the user, when clicking on any link, is guaranteed to go to the next page and see the expected content there. So, broken links are very bad for the user experience. For instance, a person came for information on your site and saw a link on the topic. Then again, clicks on it, but there’s nothing there.

How Do Broken Links Affect Website SEO And Ranking?

Eventually, Search Engine is another reason to care about broken links. Just imagine — the search robot goes to your site and regularly stumbles upon bad or broken links. This will affect your crawling budget and overall website performance. Often, a functional link is a guarantee of page quality. The internal links and the links that lead to your website.

And, they can all have a very big influence on your search rankings. This is why cleaning up broken links adds quality to your content. Whilst, making your website page(s) scannable for various Search Engines like Google, Bing, and the rest. From our experience, broken links are a common problem that has been present on the Internet since its beginning.

There’s not a website that isn’t susceptible to broken links. Even some of the biggest tech monsters online such as Cisco have at least 5% of their links broken. In short, broken links are something that can cause serious damage to your overall website and to your reputation as a business. What if users get 404 errors, aka “ page not found “ in their browsers?

This occurs quite often whenever they want to visit one of your web pages. Well, there’s no reason for you to freak out! For one thing, there are numerous ways to fix broken links on your website. And in the next section of this article, we’ll be focusing on the most practical ones. The worst thing about broken links is that they are invisible.

Keep in mind, that it’s quite very rare for the website owner to have full-fledged analytics — which hyperlinks and which pages users click on. One thing is for sure, if a year or two passes on, some of those forgotten links will become broken. Users come to the site on request and want to surf the Internet, but then it does not work out as planned — they are not working.

Since the webmaster does not often know about this, it becomes messy. The number of pages indexed by search engines is growing every day, thousands of new sites are being created, and hundreds are ceasing to exist. Although, working sites periodically change CNC, content, add new pages and files as well as delete old ones.

Realistically, if your website is less than 20 pages and broken links are easy to control, then there can be 10,000 pages on another’s and it becomes a lot more difficult to control them. Especially if you refer to web documents on several other sites — you can’t always keep track of the availability of all links from the site.

Links (both from other websites as well as the links within your own site) are important to SEO. Simply, because there is a direct correlation between the quality/quantity of links to your site. And how much search traffic your site receives. When Google started, their method for ranking websites in the search was primarily based on the number of links a webpage had.

The basic concept was that the more links a webpage had, the more likely that webpage was to have good content. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the value of a link, but here are a few aspects that make a link from a website valuable to you, the small business owner. And, this is something that’s worth mentioning in reference to our broken links case study.

If you’re an electrician, getting a link from a website dedicated to electricians is more valuable than a website dedicated to fishing. Links from relevant websites help search engines figure out what your site is about, which helps you rank for that topic. So, if you’re looking to rank highly when people search for “Seattle Ice Cream,” then links from websites about Seattle.

Or even a juicy ice cream link that is great for your website. Search engines are smart, though. If you get a link from a local blog that is based in Seattle, or a website that is about desserts, they can figure out that desserts are related to ice cream, and that a blog based in Seattle is writing about a business located in Seattle.

Similar to the NewYorkTimes.com example above, links from trusted and authoritative websites are more important than less-trusted websites. Local and regional news organizations are good examples of trusted websites. Quite often, link builders will talk about links from -.EDU and -.GOV domains. And there is a reason these are considered so valuable.

Obviously, because they typically come from very trusted websites, such as a university or state governmental agency. Both of which tend to have many “popularity votes” — do you see the pattern that’s forming? As a general rule of thumb, you should go after links from more important websites.

Note: This is why link-building services that claim to build “1000s of links per week” or “submit your website to 2000 directories instantly” all for the low low price of $99 are a waste of your time. For one thing, these links are never valuable! And worse, they can come from spammy sites, which can be considered a mark against your website!

Equally important, Search Engines such as Google and Bing like to see you get a wide variety of links. It’s an indicator of trust, and websites that don’t have a natural “link profile” can be red-flagged by search engines. So, what types of links should you target to make sure your link profile is diverse?

Consider the following types of links:

Bloggers talking about your business
Website directories
People sharing your website on their Facebook page
Reviews on sites like Yelp, InsiderPages, Google Places, etc.
Comments that you have left on blogs and news websites
Links from local organizations like your Chamber of Commerce

All of those links and others will help you form a natural link profile, for better performance in search engine rankings.

What Are The Actual Dead Links Cause?

In reality, an average person living in modern industrialized society is exposed to so many different pieces of information in a single day. Not even a person living 100 years ago would have seen it in a year. Such aspects include the likes of advertisements, newspaper headlines, websites, text messages, traffic signs, T-shirt slogans, and so on and so forth.

It’s hardly surprising that attention spans are getting shorter — where a majority of people believe themselves to be busier than ever. With this information overload, it is next to impossible to remember everything we need to. Like calling up names, dates, figures, phone numbers, email addresses, corporate details, and client info we need for effective business.

For such reasons, that’s why we constantly learn how search engines work and use link testing tools to do the maths, fixing, remembering, and information retrieval for us. But, in which cases do website links become broken or dead?

Old and unnecessary pages and documents are recklessly deleted or moved. But on other pages, in other sections, there are links to these pages. They become “broken”.
Links to another site and a change occurs on it. This can be a change of domain name, site structure, or page deletion. The site can move to a domain with www. and not configure a redirect (read about what is a 301 redirect). In this case, the link to the page without www. will also become broken.
Sites have an automatic update of content or other data from an external source. For example, with online stores, delivery services, or warehouses with data on the Internet. Failures in such systems can be the cause of dead links.
The site is processed technically or visually (change of design), and the problem arises of transferring content to a new structure. Since there is a lot of data, and technical algorithms that may not take into account all the nuances of moving page content — broken links happen.

Generally, there are several more reasons for any given website links to become broken, but we’ve already identified some of the most common and the main ones, and we’ll probably stop there for now.

How To Fix Broken Links On Your Website

The most important thing to consider is a natural, unstoppable process. The larger your site is, and the more often you refer to your own or other people’s pages — the higher the probability of broken links on the site. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about it, but regular checks and fixing can do magic rather than just sitting around and hoping for the best.

One of the shortest methods is the W3C Link Checker, a tool that checks your website for broken links and more. When you locate the links, you have 3 ways to resolve them manually.

Consider the following:

Correct the Link: Perhaps you’ve entered an incorrectly spelled link. All you have to do is edit the broken URL and replace it with the correct one.
Replace the Link: Sometimes it is better to replace a link with a functional one.
Unlink: If the page that you’ve linked to doesn’t exist anymore, or it’s a resource that is no longer relevant, then it is better to remove the link from the page.

You have to do this manually using your own hands or a website crawler tool if you are keen to get quality results. But, how do you go about this? As an example, Wikipedia removes an unnecessary page or combines two pages. You need to change the address in the broken link to lead to a new page that’s more worthwhile and credible enough.

Broken Links Are Fixed If:

Any broken URL appeared as a result of the fact that the site ceased to exist. And you can refer to the same page in the web archive or find an adequate replacement for the old link.
A bad URL appeared because the site is unavailable — check if it lasts a long time. There is always a chance that the problems are temporary and are associated with hosting issues or DDos.
You refer to a page of the site, and the URL address has changed on it. Your task is to find an old page with a new URL definition and write it in place of the old one.
The page is deleted and you can’t find a replacement for it or find it at a new address. So, there’s nothing that can be done, you’ll have to remove the broken link altogether.
To prevent your websites from indexation problems, you should close broken links in the robots.txt file. This way they can’t be indexed by search bots. Read the blog post about what is a custom robots.txt file and how to manage it correctly.

If you can’t determine dead links to your websites by yourself, you can use Sitechecker.pro-free package plan as a broken links checker. Of course, Yes! You’ll have to spend some time. But, by doing this you show respect and care towards visitors coming to the site from social networks and search engines.

By the same token, you can also reset your permalink settings or use the — .htaccess File to Fix Broken Links as well. But, besides the above WordPress link-testing plugins, there are other Best Link Testing Tools that you can also bring down to the table. To begin with, Verification or Link Testing Tools help maintain and manage large websites quickly.

Specifically, in order to ensure that not a single user clicks on a dead link or sees a box for a missing image. Such a tool will check for all broken links, images, and missing pages by going deep into multiple levels of the site for verification. However, good tools don’t just tell you that links are dead, but also tell you exactly where they are for easy fixes.

A Link Testing Tool Benefits:

It supports multiple projects
Easy export and import of test cases
Easy to integrate with many defect management tools
Automated test cases execution through XML-RPC
Easy filtration of test cases with version, keywords, test case ID, and version
Provide credentials to multiple users and assign roles to them
Easy to assign test cases to multiple users
Easy to generate test plans and test reports in various formats

But, different link testing tools provide different features and work on different platforms. Some tools can be accessed online while some require installation. With that being said, below are some of the tools that we do use and recommend to you.

Consider the following key tools:

In short, Link Testing is testing a group of units to ensure that the unit operates correctly. It is normally performed after the unit has been tested. Link Testing would be the initial testing that starts at the design stage where we create the test cases. The goal is to test each and every link that forms part of the design once the initial code is developed.

Here Is More Of What Is Tested:

Browser Full Page Test, Hostname Test,
MX Record Lookup, NS Record Lookup, and SPF Lookup
Reverse DNS and Blacklist Check
General Website Test and individual Web Page Test
HTTP Headers Test and Behind China Firewall
Email Validation Test and Certificate Validation
WHOIS, Traceroute, and TCP Traceroute
IP Lookup and Network Lookup
MTR Traceroute & Ping

The test is designed to help make your site faster by identifying what about a webpage that is fast, slow, too big, and so on.

How To Test Broken Links With Free Link Checker

To enumerate, Free Link Checker is a desktop freeware tool that does the broken links check. Whereby, you specify a starting URL for checking and the link validator software finds dead links, invalid HTTP redirects, and other problems on a website or a single web page. A broken link report is provided after validation. The search for broken links may be recursive.

Thus, validating the whole website for obsolete and dead HTML links. The program includes an HTML links spider and a broken link analyzer. In addition, Free Link Checker provides various settings for broken link checks. Displaying invalid links report, tracking progress, setting up authentication (username and password) and proxy.

It is possible to analyze links from the selected domain only. In the end, you’ll get only a summary of broken links, or receive a full report on dead or obsolete URLs (originating from a href, img, etc. HTML tags).

As well as, invalid HTTP redirects, directory redirects, forbidden links, etc. You may start immediately whenever you download the freeware link checker or gather more software details here: http://www.Control-F.com/FreeLinkChecker/ before you start.

And, as we aforementioned, different tools provide different features and work on different platforms. Some tools can be accessed online while some require installation. You can see the full list of link-testing tools that we do use and recommend.

Other Related Resource References:

Finally, we are hoping that the above-revised guide on how to cope with Broken Links was helpful. But, for more related online FAQs, feel free to Contact Us and let us know how we can sort you out. Or rather, share your thoughts in the comments box.

Originally published at https://josephmuciraexclusives.com on October 24, 2022.