How to Find Broken Links on your Blog | GreatestFart

Find Broken Links
 
Most websites have broken links, which are links that direct to a page that no longer exists.

There are many reasons your blog may have broken links. 

You may have changed a post slug, your blog may have been restructured (such as changing your default WordPress structure to more SEO-friendly URLs), you may have removed pages, or you may have switched to a new domain without a redirect.

Whatever the cause, it’s important to regularly check for and fix broken links on your blog for many reasons.

The Importance of Fixing Broken Links

One of the biggest reasons to fix your broken links is improving the user experience of your readers. If a reader is enjoying your post and finds that the links are outdated or broken, it reflects poorly on your blog nad makes your content seem outdated.

There are also SEO benefits to correcting dead links. While Google has said that 404 errors won’t hurt your blog’s search engine ranking, they still encourage bloggers to fix internal broken links.

How to Find Broken Links

The easiest way to find the broken links on your blog is using a service or app that scans your website. This type of service will show you which links are broken and which pages are no longer valid.

Broken Link Checker WordPress Plugin

The BLC plugin is one of the best applications for finding and correcting dead links on a WordPress blog. The plugin will find redirected and broken links and give you several options for fixing them. After installing the plugin, you can check the status of your blog on your dashboard.

Each broken link will have a status code to help you determine if you should update the blog, remove the link, or leave it alone. 

You can select as many broken links as you want and apply the same action to them all, including unlinking or fixing redirects.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth 

This free Windows script can check scripts, stylesheets, images, and links on your blog. After scanning your blog, it will give you info about your page size, title, recent updates, outgoing links, incoming links, and redirected URLs. You can export the report as a CSV file.

W3C Link Checker

The W3C Link Checker is a free tool that lets you check for broken links on your site with the option to show a summary or hide redirects. You will see the status of your links and an overview of any issues with your link profile.

Broken links may not seem like a big deal, but they affect user experience and your blog’s reputation. Fixing your dead links doesn’t need to take forever, but it’s best to stay on top of the problem so you aren’t dealing with hundreds of broken links as your blog grows.