What Are Broken Links?
Broken links are links to your site which are no longer valid as a ‘direction tool, something like a GPS locator’ to find the information on your website.
What can broken links do to your website?
- they can reduce the potential visitors to your website (because people can’t find the information that you recommend)
- you may lose some of your existing customers (due to annoying dead links)
- it might taint your credibility for your site (people like sites they can trust)
- this might cause a negative effect on your website’s ratings with major search engines
WHY?
Because they simply can’t get there!
After a while, once you have been working on your website, adding more and more information, the possibility also increases that there might be links that no longer work.
How do you know about broken links?
The notification process can come through several outlets:
- via a software company that you have entrusted with your site maintenance – so they will notify you and maybe also fix the broken link
- or more often – from someone who will let you know that they are having trouble accessing a page on your site
- or through analytics (like Google Web Master, for example)
Well, once you find out, that is half the battle won – the other half is fixing it and continue building your site.
Fortunately, there are tools to get this job done.
Tools To Help You Get The Job Done
There are websites that are free and others where you pay a fee for the service. I will list a few of the more commonly used ones. Check it out for yourself and see if any of them could be a match for you!
It is a FREE ONLINE link checker to help you isolate the broken links on your site. I have used them and I love using them as an online broken links checker. It is a simple process. Just open your website, copy and paste your URL in the search box and it will do the rest.
2/Validator.w3.org/checklink
This is a more intense broken links checker but useful nonetheless. It also depends on the extent and expertise of your web knowledge. In my opinion, it might not be that user-friendly for the newbie. However, the same principle – open your website, copy and paste your URL in the search box and wait for the results.
3/Xenu Link Sleuth
This is a very interesting site and software. It has to be downloaded in order to do the broken link checks. I opted not to do this as I find Brokenlinkcheck.com easy to use without downloading. I also found it to be very advanced in its description.
You be the judge.
I hope that you have found the information useful. I would love to hear your feedback in the comments section. Thank you.
Namaste
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