It’s so important to fix broken links. You may think that a broken link here and there is no big deal. Google has said that generally, website errors don’t hurt rankings. It is still important to fix these broken links. It depends on which pages have broken links, fixing them can have a huge impact if they have built up a lot of authority either from on page SEO, strong internal or inbound linking.
One of our clients recently fixed approximately 25 broken links and their website traffic increased over 80%! In addition to restoring hard earned keyword rankings and referrer links, it also creates a good impression for visitors. People expect all links to work, regardless if they are from inbound, internal or outbound link sources.
Here are a few ways to check to see if you have broken links on your website:
- Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors
- Xenu Link Sleuth
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Every Broken Link Has a Different Solution for Fixing
Once you have identified broken links, you will need to determine why they are broken in order to come up with a solution on how to fix them. If you have built a new website and notice a lot of broken links, chances are you forgot to 301 redirect your old URLs to your new URLs. Perhaps you didn’t know that needed to be done. Sometimes a link from a referrer that is mistyped could be being reported as a broken link. If the website is of value and you really want that link to count, then email the webmaster and let them know the correct URL. Sometimes you may discover that the site linking in is not of value, or even worse, spammy links have been built to hurt your website. If that is the case, you can use the Google Disavow Tool – with caution. Sometimes you could actually be linking out to a website and they may have deleted a page without adding a 301 redirect. In this case, you can email the webmaster and ask them to fix it, if the link supports one of your articles perfectly.
Contact Us for Help With Fixing Broken Links
No matter what the cause of your broken links is, finding a solution or implementation isn’t always easy. Sometimes the right solution requires a bit of detective work or implementation requires some SEO and content knowledge. Maybe there are hundreds of broken links and the sheer volume of corrections is overwhelming. We are here to help you fix broken links. You can contact us by email, fill out the form on the right side of this page, by phone at 604-779-8438 or chat with us online right now.