Broken Links Finder
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Broken Link Finder
What is a Broken Link?
A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a page or resource that does not exist. Most often, these linked pages were deleted or moved without a redirection set up.
When the user or crawler follows a broken link, the server returns a 404 (Not found) or 410 (Gone) status code.
In SEO, broken links are divided into:
- Broken outgoing links (often called simply “broken links”) - the links from your page or website and
- Broken backlinks - links to your website from other domains.
Do broken links hurt your website?
- Having broken outgoing links and broken backlinks is perfectly normal for any website. The Internet is dynamic: pages and whole websites are being deleted constantly.
- However, having too many broken outgoing links can lead to a poor user experience for your visitors. On top of that, it’s also an unnecessary waste of your crawl budget because 404 pages are a “dead end” for search engine crawlers.
- Broken backlinks are also a wasted opportunity. The backlinks that lead to 404 pages on your site could instead pass value and authority (link equity) to live relevant pages on your site, increasing their chances to rank.
Broken Links Finder
1. Online Tools
2. Browser Extensions
- Check My Links (Chrome Extension): A popular browser extension that highlights broken links on the page.
- LinkChecker (Firefox Extension): An extension for Firefox to check and validate all the links on a page.
3. Desktop Software
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: A powerful tool (free for up to 500 URLs) that crawls websites to identify broken links, missing images, and other errors.
- Xenu's Link Sleuth: A free desktop tool for Windows that checks websites for broken links, and it provides a detailed report.
4. Command-Line Tools
- wget (Linux, MacOS, Windows): You can use wget with certain flags to check for broken links from the command line.
- Curl (Linux, MacOS, Windows): A flexible tool that can also be used to check for HTTP status codes, and hence detect broken links.
5. Website CMS Plugins
- Yoast SEO (WordPress): While primarily an SEO plugin, Yoast can help detect some broken links.
- Broken Link Checker (WordPress): A dedicated plugin for finding broken links within WordPress sites.
How to fix broken backlinks
Fixing broken backlinks takes a different approach. Unlike broken links on your own site, you can’t simply edit broken backlinks. You can fix broken backlinks in a few ways:
- Option 1: Reach out to the linking website and ask for a fix. If there’s a contact option on the website, try sending a message asking them to replace the broken link with a relevant one. They may appreciate the opportunity to improve their user experience, and you get a fixed link.
- Option 2: Recreate the deleted page. Find out what the content of the gone page was and recreate it. If you’re having trouble figuring out what the page used to be, you can try plugging it into Wayback Machine.
- Option 3: Redirect the URL to another relevant URL. A simple fix is to redirect the broken link to a relevant URL. This may be the same content at a different URL that you forgot to redirect or different but relevant content that would still make sense (for instance, replacing a broken link for “how to choose an seo tool” with a link to an article titled “what to look for in an seo tool”).
- Option 4: Do nothing and leave it be a 404. If the page does not have any valuable backlinks and you don’t have many 404 s on your site, it’s fine to have broken backlinks.
