Story Based Question
Imagine you’re running an online store. You’ve spent months perfecting your site, building new product pages, writing blog posts, and tweaking your SEO strategy. One day, you get an email from a customer saying they couldn’t access a product page because the link was broken. You feel a wave of panic. What if more customers experience this? What if search engines are penalizing your site for these broken links? You need to act fast. How can you identify and fix broken links on your website before things get worse?
Exact Answer
To identify and fix broken links on a website, use tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, or broken link checkers. First, scan the site for broken links. Then, either fix the link by updating the URL or remove the link if it’s no longer needed.
Explanation
When running a website, broken links can hurt both user experience and SEO. Broken links lead users to 404 error pages, which frustrate visitors and make them leave your site. Search engines also don’t like them because they can hinder crawling and indexing.
So, identifying and fixing these broken links quickly is crucial. You can use tools like Google Search Console, which will report errors and broken links on your site. Screaming Frog is another tool that crawls your website, highlighting any broken links. You can also use free tools like Dead Link Checker to scan for broken links.
Once you identify broken links, there are two main ways to fix them:
- Update the link: If the page it was pointing to has moved or changed, update the link with the correct URL.
- Remove the link: If the linked page is no longer available and you don’t need it, simply remove the link from your site.
Example
Let’s say you run an online store that sells fitness equipment. You’ve linked to a product page for a set of dumbbells in a few blog posts and on your homepage. Over time, the manufacturer updates the page URL, but you forget to change the link on your site. A customer clicks on the link to buy the dumbbells, but they land on a 404 page instead.
Now, you need to fix it. You log into Google Search Console and find that the dumbbell link is broken. You also use Screaming Frog, which confirms that several blog posts and pages are still pointing to the wrong URL. You update the broken links with the new page URL or remove them entirely if the dumbbells are no longer in stock. This ensures your customers can find the products they want, and search engines continue to crawl your site without issues.
By staying on top of broken links, you can improve both user experience and SEO, keeping your website running smoothly.