If you manage a website, you should check for broken internal links on a regular basis using free broken link finder tool.
Visitors who encounter broken internal links may become dissatisfied and leave your site. They can also have a negative impact on your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
But don’t be concerned. There are methods for easily locating and repairing broken links on your own.
It will take some time, but it will be worthwhile for both your users and your website in the long run.
Why Are Internal Links Important?
Internal links are essential for SEO because they assist search engines in understanding the structure of your website.
They also assist users in navigating your website and finding the information they seek.
Furthermore, Google has stated that internal link structure is an important ranking factor.
As a result, if you’re not paying attention to your website’s internal links, you could be losing valuable search engine traffic.
What Exactly Are Broken Internal Links?
A broken internal link is one that leads to a page on your website that no longer exists.
This can happen for a variety of reasons, including:
- The page has since been removed.
- The page has been relocated, but the link has not been updated.
- The URL contains an error.
- The link leads to the incorrect page.
Broken internal links can have a number of negative effects on your website, including:
- Visitors who are dissatisfied: If a user clicks on a broken link, they will be directed to a 404 error page. This may cause them to leave your website and seek information elsewhere.
- Negatively Affected SEO: Internal links help search engines understand the structure of your website, which has a negative impact on SEO. If your website has a high number of broken internal links, it can have a negative impact on its SEO.
- Lost website traffic: If search engines are unable to properly crawl your website due to broken links, you may lose valuable traffic.
How did I get so many broken links?
Broken internal links can appear on your website for a variety of reasons.
In some cases, the links were always broken and you were completely unaware of it.
In other cases, the links may have worked at one point but stopped working due to a change made to your website by you or someone else.
You Modified A Page’s URL
If you’ve ever changed the URL of a page on your website, any internal links pointing to the old URL will no longer work.
Assume you have a page with the URL https://example.com/services.
However, you changed the URL to https://example.com/our-services.
Internal links pointing to the old URL will be broken because they still point to the old location of the page.
Any links to https://example.com/services must be updated to point to the new URL, https://example.com/our-services.
You Typed In the Wrong URL When You Make A Link
It’s easy to enter the wrong URL when creating internal links.
This can happen for a variety of reasons, including:
- You spelled the URL of the page you’re linking to incorrectly.
- You omitted the “https://” or “http://” portion of the URL.
- In the URL, you included an extra space.
All of these minor errors can result in a broken link.
Always double-check your work when creating links to ensure you’re using the correct URL.
Careless errors are a common cause of broken internal links.
The person in charge was either unaware that they were causing broken links or was not paying attention.
In any case, if your site has a lot of broken internal links, you should fix them as soon as possible.
The page to which you are linking has been removed
The link will be broken if you link to a page that no longer exists.
This can happen for a variety of reasons, including:
- The page was never intended to be created in the first place.
- The page was accidentally deleted.
- The page was removed on purpose, but it was not replaced with a new page.
Don’t underestimate the problems that global changes to a site’s internal links can cause if you’re not paying attention.
Links to specific types of content have been removed or relocated
Some types of content are frequently removed or relocated to other areas of a website.
These are some examples:
- PDFs.
- Images.
- Videos.
- Files with audio.
The link will be broken if you link to any of these types of content and the file has been moved or deleted.
Check your website’s links to PDFs, images, and videos to ensure they’re still active.
You recently changed the URL structure of your website and did not redirect old URLs
If you’ve recently changed the URL structure of your website, any old URLs will no longer work.
Because the new URLs differ from the old ones, this can result in broken links. Assume your website has the following URL structure:
- https://example.com/services/service-1
- https://example.com/services/service-2
- https://example.com/services/service-3
But then you changed the URL structure to this:
- https://example.com/our-services/service-1
- https://example.com/our-services/service-2
- https://example.com/our-services/service-3
Any old links pointing to the old URLs will no longer function. This is due to the fact that the new URL structure differs from the old one. To fix this, you’ll need to set up redirects from the old URLs to the new ones.
You should ideally use 301 redirects rather than 302 redirects.
301 redirects are permanent and notify search engines that a page has been relocated. The 302 redirection is only temporary.
Regardless of how much time I spend working in SEO, I continue to come across developers who prefer 302 redirects as their preferred solution.
Unfortunately, this is not correct or ideal.
When making permanent changes to your website’s structure, always use a 1:1 ratio of 301 redirects on any links that may become broken as a result of the change.
Broken Page Elements Caused By Malfunctioning Plugins And Other Issues
Another common cause of broken links is faulty plugins and other page elements.
These are some examples:
- Social media plugins that aren’t working.
- Contact forms that aren’t working.
- Javascript or CSS files that aren’t working.
When these elements are broken, it is possible that links will be broken as well.
For example, if you have a broken social media plugin, it may prevent people from sharing your content on social media.
This may result in fewer people linking to your website.
Another example would be if your contact form isn’t working properly.
If people are unable to contact you, they may look for your email address elsewhere on your website.
If they can’t find it, they may abandon the search and visit another website.
This, once again, may result in fewer people linking to your site.
People may not be able to watch your videos if your video player is not working.
People may be unable to view your images if your image gallery is not functioning properly.
Both of these factors may result in fewer people linking to your site. To resolve this issue, locate and repair the broken element.
For instance, if a social media plugin isn’t working, you may need to update it or use a different plugin.
If your contact form isn’t working, you may need to fix it or find another contact form plugin.
Your website is currently unavailable
It’s a major issue if your entire website is down.
Because people can’t access your website, any links pointing to it will be broken.
This can result in a significant decrease in overall traffic. While this usually has an effect on external links, it can also have an effect on internal links because they will now be zero.
This is especially problematic if the site is down for an extended period of time before you discover the problem.
You must determine the cause of your website’s downtime and resolve the issue. It could be a problem with your hosting or domain name, or it could be something else.
Once you’ve identified and resolved the issue, your website should be back up and running.
However, sometimes an entire website “disappears,” leaving only a blank page.
If your website displays a blank page, it is most likely due to a server or hosting issue.
How to Look for Broken Internal Links
There are several methods for locating broken internal links on your website.
These methods range from manually inspecting each link to utilising automated tools.
We’ll start with the manual method because it’s the most basic.
For this method, go through each page on your website and check all links, including those in the navigation menu, sidebar, footer, and elsewhere on the page.
Explore each link to see where it takes you.
That’s fantastic if the link takes you to another page on your website!
If not, you’ve come across a broken link.
To check for broken links, you can also use Google Chrome’s “Inspect” tool. Inspect any page on your website by right-clicking on it and selecting Inspect.
This brings up the “Inspect” panel.
Refresh the page after selecting the “Console” tab.
There will be a list of any 404 errors. A 404 error indicates that the page could not be located.
To put it another way, it’s a broken link.
There are a few different tools you can use to automate the process of finding broken links.
These tools will crawl your site and verify all of your links.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that allows you to monitor the performance of your website in Google search results.
One of the many things it can do is display any 404 errors generated by your website.
Navigate to Crawl > Crawl Errors in Google Search Console. You can view any 404 errors that your website has generated from this page.
The Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a desktop application that crawls websites and detects broken links. It’s compatible with both Windows and Mac.
After you’ve downloaded and installed the programme, enter the URL of your website and press the Start button.
After that, the programme will crawl your website and generate a list of all the internal links it discovers.
This list can then be exported as a CSV file.
Analytics by Google
Google Analytics is a free tool for tracking the traffic to your website. You can use it to determine which pages on your website cause 404 errors.
Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Organic Search in Google Analytics. You can export the list of pages and crawl them with Screaming Frog from this page.
Once you’ve added the file to Screaming Frog and crawled it, you can see the errors by using Google Analytics’ pages as a list.
The advantage of doing it this way rather than crawling all pages with Screaming Frog is that you can prioritise your internal link correction efforts based on which pages are receiving traffic on your site.
How to Repair Broken Internelinks
When you’ve identified the broken internal links on your website, it’s time to repair them.
Here are a few approaches you can take:
- Redirect the link: If the page to which the link points has been relocated, you can redirect the link to the new location. This ensures that users are directed to the correct page and does not harm your website’s SEO.
- Update the link: If the URL has a typo or is pointing to the wrong page, you can change it to point to the correct page. Again, this will help to improve the SEO of your website.
- Remove the following link: In some cases, removing the broken link from your website may be the best option. This is typically the case if the linked page has been removed and is no longer accessible.
You should also look at Google Analytics reporting to see which pages get the most traffic and prioritise your link removals.
You can reduce your workload by working on prioritising these tasks.
This works well for sites with a few pages that receive a high volume of visitors rather than thousands of pages that receive a high volume of visitors.
You can find and repair any broken internal links on your website by following these steps. This will help to improve your website’s SEO and keep visitors satisfied.
Here are some pointers for locating and repairing broken internal links:
Make Use of a Link Checker
There are numerous link checkers available on the internet.
Some are free, while others require payment.
A quick Google search will yield a plethora of options.
Examine Your Website’s XML Sitemap
If your website has an XML sitemap, this is a great way to find broken links.
Crawl the sitemap after downloading it and opening it in Screaming Frog.
You can view all of your website’s links from here and check to see if any are broken.
Examine for Redirects
If you recently moved pages on your website, some old links may still point to the old page.
Use a tool like Screaming Frog to check.
Simply enter the URL of your website and press the Start button.
After that, the programme will crawl your website and generate a list of all the internal links it discovers. This list can then be exported as a CSV file.
Make use of Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track the traffic to your website.
You can use it to determine which pages on your website cause 404 errors. Go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages in Google Analytics.
You should see a list of all the pages on your website, as well as how many 404 errors each page has generated.
After that, the programme will crawl your website and generate a list of all the internal links it discovers. This list can then be exported as a CSV file.
If you have many pages of content that cannot be crawled or indexed, the overall quality of your website may suffer.
Second, one metric that Google could use to determine the quality of a website is links.
If a website has a lot of broken links that cause a lot of errors, Google may consider it low quality.
As a result, your search engine ranking may suffer.
Finally, people use hyperlinks to navigate the internet. It’s infuriating to click on a broken link.
Visitors may leave your site as a result of this.
Broken internal links are inconvenient, but they are a common SEO task that is overlooked.
Internal links that are broken can harm your website’s SEO and frustrate visitors.
However, by using a link checker and inspecting your site’s XML sitemap, you can quickly identify and repair any broken links on your website.
It will aid in the improvement of your SEO, the retention of visitors, and the avoidance of potential issues with Google crawling and indexing your website.
Take the time to repair broken internal links, and your website will benefit.
Learn more from SEO and read Internal Links As A Ranking Factor: What You Need To Know.
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