Story-Based Question
You’re managing a website for a local restaurant, and you notice that after a website update, the link to the restaurant’s menu page is no longer working. Visitors who click on it end up on a 404 error page. You also realize that search engines might be crawling these broken links and potentially penalizing your site. What impact could these broken links have on your website’s SEO and what steps can you take to fix them?
Exact Answer
Broken links are links on your website that no longer lead to the intended destination, either because the linked page has been removed, the URL is incorrect, or the target page is temporarily unavailable. Broken links can negatively affect On-Page SEO by harming user experience, reducing crawlability, and diminishing page authority.
Explanation
Broken links can hurt your site’s SEO in several ways:
- User Experience: When users encounter broken links, they get frustrated and may leave your site. This increases your bounce rate and reduces user engagement—factors that search engines consider when ranking a site. If visitors can’t access the content they were promised, they might not return.
- Crawlability: Search engines use crawlers to scan your website and index your pages. Broken links can prevent crawlers from reaching certain parts of your site, causing those pages to go unindexed. This can affect your site’s visibility in search results.
- Page Authority: Broken links also disrupt internal linking, which helps spread link equity across your pages. If important pages have broken links pointing to them, they miss out on potential authority, which impacts their ability to rank well.
- SEO Penalties: Though broken links by themselves don’t directly lead to penalties, they can contribute to a poor overall website experience. If search engines notice an unusually high number of broken links on your site, they may interpret it as a signal that your website is outdated or poorly maintained, which can harm your SEO.
Example
Let’s take the example of the restaurant website mentioned earlier. Imagine you have a link to the restaurant’s menu page from the homepage. However, after a redesign, the page was deleted or the URL changed, leaving the original link broken. Here’s how broken links impact this situation:
- User Experience: If a customer clicks the “Menu” link and lands on a 404 page, they are likely to get frustrated, leading to a higher bounce rate.
- Crawlability: If search engines try to crawl the broken link, they may get stuck and unable to index the menu page, which could prevent it from appearing in search results.
- Page Authority: If the menu page had internal links pointing to other important pages (like a contact page), those links are no longer effective, meaning your site’s link equity is being wasted.
To resolve this, you would:
- Fix the Broken Link: Ensure the link on the homepage correctly points to the menu page with the right URL.
- Redirect the Broken Link: If the menu page was moved or renamed, use a 301 redirect to guide users (and search engines) to the new page.
- Use a Link Checker Tool: Regularly run a link checker tool (like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console) to identify and fix any broken links that might affect your SEO.