Story-Based Question
You manage a blog that covers various topics like health, technology, and travel. Over time, you’ve noticed that traffic to some of your older blog posts has dropped, and users are bouncing off the site after clicking on certain links. You decide to investigate, suspecting that some of the links are broken. What steps can you take to find these broken links, and how can you fix them to improve both user experience and SEO?
Exact Answer
To find and fix broken links on a website, use tools like Google Search Console or Screaming Frog to scan for 404 errors. After identifying the broken links, update or replace them with correct URLs or set up 301 redirects to guide users and search engines to the right pages.
Explanation
Broken links are a common issue on many websites, especially as content ages and URLs change. Here’s how to handle them:
- Finding Broken Links:
You can use several tools to help you find broken links on your website.- Google Search Console: This tool shows you crawl errors, including 404 (Not Found) errors, which indicate broken links. By checking the Coverage section, you can identify which pages Googlebot couldn’t crawl due to broken links.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This desktop tool crawls your site and reports on broken links, giving you a list of URLs with issues. It also helps you see where those broken links are located (internal or external).
- Broken Link Checker: There are online tools specifically designed to check for broken links on your site, such as BrokenLinkCheck.com.
- Fixing Broken Links:
After finding the broken links, it’s time to fix them. There are several ways to go about it:- Update the Links: If the link is broken because the destination page has moved or the URL changed, simply update the link with the correct URL. This is often the easiest solution.
- Redirect the Link: If the original page no longer exists but you have a similar page, you can set up a 301 redirect to point the old URL to the new page. This helps maintain your page authority and prevents users from seeing 404 errors.
- Remove or Replace the Link: If the link is no longer relevant (e.g., a product has been discontinued or a blog post is outdated), it’s better to remove the link entirely or replace it with a relevant alternative.
- Ongoing Monitoring:
Make checking for broken links a regular part of your site maintenance. You can schedule monthly scans with tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console to ensure that your website remains in good health and free from broken links.
Example
Let’s go back to the blog you manage. Imagine one of your old travel blog posts contains a link to an external website about a travel destination that no longer exists. Over time, users who click on that link end up on a 404 page, which negatively affects their experience and increases your bounce rate.
To fix this:
- Use Google Search Console: Check for 404 errors related to the travel post’s link. You’ll find a report that shows the pages with broken links.
- Use Screaming Frog: Crawl the blog post and check all the internal and external links to ensure they all work. The tool will highlight any 404 errors.
- Update the Link: If the destination is still available but the URL changed, update the link to the correct URL. If the destination is no longer available, find a related blog or external resource and link to that instead.
- 301 Redirect: If the travel destination page has been moved or replaced with a similar page, set up a 301 redirect to guide users and search engines to the correct page.
By regularly finding and fixing broken links, you’ll improve both user experience and SEO performance, ensuring your site stays in top shape.