Broken links on your website
are like torn pages in a book
Would you buy a book with torn pages?
The answer is obviously no. Google agrees with you on that one and penalizes websites with broken links, which has a direct effect on their ranking in the search engine's results.Google considers that the internal "mesh" of a site one of SEO's key factors.
Your website's visitors will be even more direct. They will simply leave your website at the first sight of a dead link.
It also directly impacts your image and reputation. Internet users will simply tell their friends:
The various types of dead links
A website typically has 2 types of links:- internal links (also called internal mesh) which point towards other pages of your website
- external links (also called netlinking) which send back towards other websites.
In both cases your visitors will arrive on:
- a blank page with a dreadful message such as “Impossible to find the page”
- a page indicating “Error 404”.
Identify your broken links
Several free tools can help you identify broken links on your website.
W3C Link Checker [online free tool in English]
That tool is perfect for casual checking. It allows you to verify all the links of a page in a few seconds. It also indicates the location of the broken links on the page.
A downside is that it is necessary to check every individual website.
Xenu Link Sleuth [free software for PC in French]
This powerful tool allows you to scan your whole site in a few seconds and indicates all the broken links to other pages, images, plug-ins, scripts, frames, styles, etc.
ScreamingFrog [free software for Mac and PC in English]
Complete and powerful, ScreamingFrog is a non-specialized tool (well known in the SEO circles), which allows you to identify various types of errors on your website that can have a consequence on your SEO. It gives you a list of all the broken internal and external links on all the pages of your website.
Small downside, in its free version, it limits its analysis to 500 pages.
Google Webmaster [free online tool in English]
Now known as Google Search Console, this tool from Google is your website's coach. It must be installed on your website to verify its health permanently.
It provides important information on your site and suggests numerous optimizations. In the Exploration Errors section it gives a detailed list of all the broken links.
To sum it up, we recommend the following approach:
- Download ScreamingFrog, scan your website and correct all links as quickly as possible.
- Install Google Webmaster and consult it regularly to ensure that your site is always top class.