Time to fix some broken links!

No one likes broken links. They’re bad for SEO, crawlers, and the overall user experience. You don’t want your website visitors to click on a link and get a 404 error message. You spend many resources to get people’s attention, so you want them to have a flawless experience when getting in touch with your brand.

So, how do you find and fix broken links? You can either use desktop software, any SEO audit tools, or online broker link checkers.

For example, Google Search Console is one of the best free tools for this job. And it’s pretty fast, once you do the setup and verify your site with Google. These steps may seem like a waste of your time, but it’s a friendly SEO tool that can help you manage internal and external links, among many other SEO-related elements. Overall, it’s better if you don’t overlook this resource.

Google Search Console includes a Crawls Errors report, where it lists all the pages on your website that returned a 404 (page not found) to Google. All you have to do is click on those links, and you’ll get a pop-up window where you get to see which pages link to that error message.

Note that not all broken links are built equal. Sometimes, someone misspells an URL or you move your website and forget to update some internal links. Or, you linked to a PDF that has been deleted in the meanwhile. So, you need to go through every link, see what caused the 404 error message and fix accordingly.

Here are the solutions that are most likely to solve your broken links:

• If you moved your website, you should make sure that the developer sets up a 301 redirect to the correct URLs.
• If you find any misspelled URLs, update them with the correct version.
• If external links to your website are incorrect, ask the owners of other sites to adjust or remove them.
• If you link to external resources, make sure everything you use to support your statements is up-to-date and relevant to your topic. Replace any links that don’t add value to your readers with new research and recent data.

Fixing broken links may seem a bit complicated at the beginning, but it’s nothing you can’t handle with the right tool. Also, make sure you remember to do it periodically to improve SEO and keep your content updated.