If you’ve been blogging for more than a few months, you may have broken links hiding on your site. Luckily, this common problem is easy to fix!
What are broken links?
Broken links are URLs that no longer link to an active page. The link is still clickable, but it doesn’t take the user to the desired destination. Having a lot of broken links on your site can hurt your ranking in search engines.
What causes broken links?
Broken links can happen for several reasons. Maybe you linked to a site that no longer exists, or perhaps you changed the URL for a post and forgot to create a redirect. If your site allows users to link a URL in the comments, you may notice a lot of broken links from old comments.
How do you fix broken links?
There is a free plugin called Broken Link Checker that can make checking links quick & easy. Plus, you can easily bulk-remove any broken links you don’t need anymore. This tool can also help you find places where you might have accidentally linked to the wrong place.
When I first ran this plugin, I had hundreds of broken links on my site, mainly from blog comments. I was able to quickly bulk select the broken links and unlink them, so the comment remained, but the broken links were removed. Now, I can regularly check to see if there are links to fix.
Here’s an example from Virginia Bloggers:
I found a couple of URLs that weren’t working anymore. It was easy to jump to the URL and see where the problem was. The first one just needed an updated URL, and the second link was from an old post that I removed. It only took a minute or two to fix it!
Fixing or removing broken links can help improve your blog’s SEO, so it’s a good thing to do regularly. If you have questions, leave them in the comments below!
Nice tools and I got a broken link that was due to a typo from me. I personally use a WordPress plugin called Broken Link Checker. Might have missed getting this link reported. Otherwise, I get an email from the above plugin regularly. It checked for broken links every 72 hours and emails me if any links are broken. I think once an year is too long to check for broken links.