The dreaded 404 or 403 redirect page. Or the, “this link is broken page.” Now many people debate what exactly are the effects of broken links, for your SEO. You can relax somewhat, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. However, it does have some effect, and if you can fix it, then why not?
It’s really hard to avoid broken links completely, especially if you’ve ever made a large list of something. Or if you are changing your site around, and the links get messed up. Now despite what people tell you, having a broken link is not a sign of sloppiness and being unprofessional. Broken links will happen, however, it is a sign of laziness not to fix them. They will occur, but now it is quite easy to be notified about it, and to get them fixed. Nothing is more frustrating, then when you’re reading a post, and they say click here for more information, and “here” is a broken link. So I’ve compiled a list of free sources, that allow you to easily check your links, to make sure they are all legit.
*Note* I haven’t tried all of these yet, so some may be easier to use then others, but they should all do the job.
First, check out this site. It has a bunch of free downloadable programs, that allow you do do fun stuff like link popularity, checking backlinks, but mainly to check for broken links.
Second, there’s a great program called linktiger. That sends you an email with how many broken links you have. I use this one, and it’s pretty useful. You can just login and see which links are broken. It sends you weekly updates, of all new broken links.
Third, there’s a wordpress plugin that you can install, that will show up in your dashboard, every time you have a bad link. You can always trust wordpress, and so this one I would highly recommend. Unless you don’t use wordpress this is a great free option, and you should be checking your dashboard regularly anyway, so you’ll be able to fix the problem immediately.
And Fourth, Firefox has created an addon called linkchecker. Firefox has lots of great plugins and so if you aren’t using it already, you need to switch. But this is another great free option, that can help you as well.
So now that I’ve showed you all of these free, easy, options, you have No Excuse! You Are being unprofessional and lazy, if you have broken links on your site. So install the plugin, and addon, and start fixing all of your broken links today.
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Very interesting post. Keep up the good work!
It is very easy to fix broken link in wordpress, all you need is to install broken link plugin on your wordpress and this will tell you anytime you have broken link on your blog.