Websites Broken Link Checker

Free Broken Link Checker

Check the broken links for any webpage. The tool instantly checks which external or internal links of a webpage are broken. Broken links are the dead links, which means the links which return HTTP status code 404.

Just enter any URL and check for broken links instantly.

What are broken links in SEO?

In simple, broken links are dead links. These links do not work any further for a website. Suppose you browse a website and click any of its links, but instead of landing on the relevant page, you get the 404 error message on a landing page. Therefore, broken links are the dead links that route you to a 404 error message page.

However, some of the most common causes of broken links are

• The URL is temporarily or permanently unavailable.
• A user entered an invalid URL.
• The web admin deletes the webpage and forgets to update the latest changes.
• The web admin permanently moves or renames the webpage to a new URL but fails to update the latest changes.
• The webpage was blocked by a firewall or some other relevant software.
• Linking to content like images, videos, and PDFs that have been deleted or moved.

Before we get to know how broken links affect your SEO. One must understand that there are two types of broken links.

• Internal broken links are links on your website that route the traffic to another page of the same website with a 404 error message.
• External broken links are the links on your website that route the traffic to another website page with a 404 error message.

Are broken links good for SEO?

Clicking on the web link means that the user expects some relevant content. But what if the landing page only shows a 404 error message. Does the user feel comfortable with all that? The answer is a big "NO." Because when the user lands on the URL that is dead, the user performs any of the following actions.

• It will leave that webpage, which results in a bounce rate increment.
• Share its worst experience on different social media platforms.
• Advise other persons and colleagues not to visit your website.

All that results in a terrible user experience. Nowadays, more focus is on user experience. But if the user does not find the content it wishes to get. Then it will leave that page that gives a negative signal to Google. And if Google gets an idea that your webpage is now not relevant to the user. It will de-rank your website, which results in a drop in your organic traffic.

The website or webpage that has not been audited for a more extended period may suffer from a link rot (a URL with many broken links).

How do bots handle broken links?

Search engine bots often crawl various website pages to find new or indexable links. Bots look for anchor tags inside a page's source code and then add those links to their list of crawlable URLs. Once they start crawling those newly found URLs, they analyze each URL's HTTP response code. If the URL returns 404, bots do not add the specified URL to their index and even remove that URL from their index if it was already indexed earlier.

How do you detect the broken links by using a broken link checker?

The broken link checker is easy to use. Anybody can use it with no special skills required. It's a handy tool for website owners, web admins, and SEO professionals because there is no limit for searches. The tool is free of charge, and no registration is required.

To check the broken links on any web URL, perform the following steps.

• Open the Website Broken Link Checker Tool.
• Enter the URL in the field mentioned for that purpose, and click on the "Check" button.
• First, the given URL is requested, then its response is scanned for any anchor links. When anchor links are found with an anchor HTML tag, then those links (either internal or external) are each requested by the tool and checked whether they return a 404 response code or any other. If the page sends a 404 response code in HTTP headers, the URL is incorrect or not configured to open correctly.
• After the detailed analysis, the tool gives you a detailed report. The information includes the Link's URL, whether that link (do-follow or no-follow), its type (internal or external), and its status (broken or not).

How to fix dead links?

To fix the website's broken links, you need to check your webpage with our dead link checking tool. It finds every non-existent URL and tells you about it. After seeing the list of URLs, first, check each URL, and examine why it's broken. After that, you should either remove those anchor links from the subjected webpage or fix those links to enable them to open correctly and return a 200 response code.

How do you prevent broken links?

There are some precautionary measures that you can take to prevent the broken links on your website's URL.

• Be careful while manually creating the URL. Be mindful of typos. Do not try to italicize or bold your URL address.
• Never put punctuation after your URL.
• Verify the links to ensure they are directed to the right landing page.
• If you clean up some resources from your website, like images, then make sure not to delete the photos.
• Set up the 301 redirects for all those pages that no longer exist.
• Make a habit of regularly auditing the links of each web page from the broken link checker tool.