Useful information about broken links: why they appear, how to identify and fix them

Creating a high-quality and useful website for the audience is only half the task facing its owner and the relevant employees. It is also very important to organize its stable operation in the future. And one of the tasks that must be performed here can rightfully be called checking broken links. These works should be carried out at certain intervals, because this is the only way to promptly identify and remove those links that lead nowhere, that is, get rid of broken links.

If you do not pay due attention to this point, then at some point in time the user will click on the corresponding link, and in response, a message with a 404 error will appear on his screen, indicating that nothing was found. What do you think a person will do in this case? Will he continue to stay on your site, checking if other links work? Most likely, no. This means that he will simply go to other sites, and his desire to return to your portal will simply disappear. As a result, you lose another visitor, and along with him, a potential client of your business.

And the presence of broken links negatively affects the behavioral factors of the site. The fact is that not only users, but also search bots can come across such problematic links. If they find them, they will most likely apply sanctions, namely, they will lower the position of your resource in the search results. In addition, if with each new visit to your site the bots will find new broken links, that is, they will accumulate, then they may well assign your site the status of “Abandoned”, as a result of which it will simply be removed from the search results.

Why are we telling you all this? So that you understand how important it will be to identify and remove them in a timely manner. Without such work, there can be no talk of effective promotion of your site, and along with this, stable, promising business operation. Imagine a situation where you work hard on your resource, allocate considerable amounts of money every month for advertising, SEO promotion, but in the end you get nothing due to the fact that the user simply cannot get to your page. And this happens every time broken links are not detected in a timely manner and not fixed.

In today's review, get to know in more detail what this problem is and what errors it can cause. Let's talk about how broken links can appear on a site in principle, if everything was initially implemented correctly. We will highlight a number of problems that the presence of such links can lead to, and also get to know how to detect them. We will provide a number of services that will help automate this work, speed it up and improve the quality. We will tell you how to properly fix broken links or remove them without a trace. We will write out a number of additional recommendations that will improve the quality of this work and minimize the occurrence of problems in the future. So, first things first.

What are broken links?

Broken links, that is, broken links are links that lead users to non-working pages, that is, those where an error code awaits them. As a result, users will not be able to see the content of this page. The error codes that occur in this case may be different:

1. 404. This code hides the error “Page not found”, indicating that this page was not found on the server. This problem occurs most often in practice, but, alas, it is not the only one.
2. 400. This error is called “Bad request”, that is, a bad request. It will be shown to users who entered the URL incorrectly. It turns out that in this case the server cannot process the incoming request and, accordingly, return the result. In practice, such a problem often occurs when users enter invalid characters when entering a link. Most often, there are cases when instead of a double slash you can see a pound sign. That is, such an error is evidence of an incorrectly entered address. Looking ahead, we note that it can be corrected by making adjustments to the URL itself.
3. 403. This error is called “Forbidden”. This means that the user who is trying to connect to a particular page does not have the appropriate access rights. Alternatively, in practice, this happens in cases where the page is protected by a special password and only those users who have previously registered or who have the appropriate rights can connect to it. This could be the project administrator, manager. A similar error will also be shown on the screen if we are talking about closed content.
4. 410. This is an error called “Gone”. It occurs when the page has been deleted, that is, it is no longer available for viewing.
5. 500. This is an "Internal Server Error", that is, an internal server error. Here we are talking about the fact that the problem did not occur on the site itself or a separate page, but on the server side, as a result of which it cannot process the user request. There are several reasons for such an error, ranging from common technical malfunctions of software or hardware to incorrectly configured settings.

Error codes when working with broken links are what will allow specialists to initially understand what the problem is and try to find a solution. Also, based on them, users will be able to understand the reason why they cannot get to the desired page. Make it a habit to constantly monitor the technical condition of your site, each time making sure that your visitors get access to any pages. Let us repeat that it is also important to do this for stable promotion of the site in search results, ensuring good sales.

The main reasons for the appearance of broken links on the site

If you analyze the broken links that are most often found on sites today, you can see that most of them are directly related to the errors that users make when working with the site or manipulations that were made earlier. But in any case, only by understanding the reason for the occurrence of such problems can you minimize them in the future, or even eliminate them altogether.

The most common reasons for the appearance of broken links in practice are:

• The site page was deleted by the resource owner or moved to a new address. Such phenomena are quite common in practice and there is nothing to worry about. But here it is very important to implement everything as correctly as possible. In particular, to prevent a broken link from appearing when transferring pages to a new URL, you need to make the appropriate adjustments to it, completely deleting it from the old address and redirecting it to the new one. The fact is that even if you delete a link on the site, it can still be used for clicks. Moreover, they will lead to a page that no longer exists. Let's say you are the owner of an online store and at some point in time you simply update your product range, as a result of which entire pages are simply deleted from your catalog. But at the same time, you had customers who previously ordered these products and now they will decide to contact you again to make a purchase. With a high degree of probability, they still have your old link and they will click on it. Moreover, this page can still be in the search engine index for a certain time, that is, it will hang in the search results. As a result, visitors see a 410 error on the screen. By and large, such a problem will only be relevant until search bots re-check the page, removing it from the search results.
• Users make mistakes when entering the URL. This problem occurs mainly in the case of manual input, but it is also often made when copying the address, simply missing one or more letters, or, conversely, accidentally entering additional characters using the wrong case. As a result, error 400 may appear on the screen, indicating that the system has directed you to a non-existent page. In this case, it is important to double-check the correctness of the input and make the appropriate adjustments. After that, the page should open without problems.
• Lack of control over external links. In this case, we are talking about external links that are already outdated and no longer relevant. As part of SEO website promotion, not only the optimization of internal pages is performed, but also the growth of the link mass. That is, the resource owner strives to ensure that as many third-party portals as possible link to his site, because this increases the trust of search engines in him. By and large, linkbuilding is a key stage of external SEO. But here it is also important to ensure good quality of links, and not just their quantity. This means that you need to constantly monitor not only internal but also external links, check which pages of your site they lead to and delete or change those that direct users to deleted pages. Believe me, such actions will not be performed by the site where you placed your backlinks - this is your direct responsibility.
• Deleting uploaded files. Surely you have already encountered the fact that a site can place links not only to a specific page, but also to files that users can additionally download. These can be images, video content, documents saved in PDF format, etc. It turns out that if you delete such a file, but leave a link to it on other pages of your site or on external sources, then such a link immediately becomes broken. In practice, such a problem most often occurs with downloaded price lists. Many stores add them so that potential buyers are always aware of prices, including wholesale ones. But at some point in time, this price list becomes irrelevant, it is deleted, but the link to it is left in the description or on external sources. As a result, if a new user decides to follow such a link and download a document for himself, he will get to a page with the code “Deleted”.
• Incorrectly executed site restructuring. In the case when new sections are created on the portal, when its structure changes, it is important to pay attention to the correct configuration of redirects. Or you can make adjustments to old links manually, making sure that you have not made any mistakes here. If you do not do this, then users will not be able to get to the page they need, which is guaranteed to cause dissatisfaction on their part and force them to refuse to cooperate with you. In this case, your competitors will benefit, who will monitor the quality of their links and promptly delete broken ones.
• Errors associated with damage to the site code. They appear when developers make mistakes, accidental or out of ignorance, when writing HTML code, CSS or JavaScript. As a result, the user sees the error code 404, which indicates that the requested page was not found.

As you can see, there are many reasons why broken links appear. But regardless of their type and how they appeared, you should pay due attention to eliminating this problem. Otherwise, your site may be subject to sanctions from the search engine, and also cause discontent among the target audience.

Problems that can be caused by the presence of broken links on the site

At the beginning of the review, we already talked about the fact that the presence of broken links on the site can be a serious obstacle to promoting your portal to the top of search results. And this is despite the fact that their very presence on the resource is not directly punished by search engines. Their main harm to the development of the site is that the portal, where there are broken links, worsens the user experience, does not meet the expectations of visitors. And here everything is quite clear that those people who click on the link want to access the relevant information. If this does not happen, there is dissatisfaction with the interaction with the site and, as a result, an appeal to competitors.

If you do not pay attention to removing broken links from the site, then you may eventually face the following negative consequences:

1. Deterioration of the site ranking by search bots, which will ultimately lead to the loss of previously occupied positions in search results. If, during the site check, search engines see that a large number of pages are inaccessible to users, then they will regard this as a low quality of the site, which will lead to a decrease in the position of the page in search results. But if, during scanning, the crawler sees a couple of broken links, it will not perceive them as a gross error, that is, it will not take any measures. But during the next site check, if it turns out that you decided not to fix the problem, that is, the number of broken links will increase, then the bot's attitude towards your site will noticeably worsen.
2. Negative impact on behavioral factors. The presence of broken links on the resource is what will increase the number of refusals. This phenomenon is quite natural and justified: if people follow the link and see that the page is unavailable, they will not delve into the reasons for this, understand your situation, but will simply go to the nearest competitors. And this is highly likely to be done not only by new clients, but also by those who were previously extremely loyal to your business. You lose visitors, and along with this, sales, income.
3. Deterioration of site usability. Broken links are what, among other things, will provoke problems with navigation on the site, interlinking. Let us repeat that this will primarily have a negative impact on the user experience. If a person cannot go from the catalog directly to the card of the desired product, he will most likely leave the site and will not look for a solution to such a problem. Poor usability is also the cause of problems with site indexing: search bots will not be able to form a complete picture of the structure of your resource, as a result of which some pages may remain unindexed.
4. The loss of the page's link weight. If the link is not working, it will not be able to transfer weight to the corresponding resource from other sites. As a result, external optimization worsens, the site loses backlinks, which would be very important for its ranking.

I would like to draw your attention to the impact of broken links on the crawling budget. Until relatively recently, it was believed that broken links on a site still consume resources needed to scan the site's pages. Experts were sure that if a search bot spends its limits on checking pages with broken links, it may simply not have the resources left to process important pages. But in the end, it was proven that this is nothing more than a myth. The fact is that crawlers check broken pages, including repeated checks to confirm their inaccessibility, without compromising quality pages. The only thing that turned out to be true in all of this is that broken links can significantly slow down the entire process of indexing a site, since bots will be forced to return to low-quality pages again and again, rechecking them.

Detecting broken links on a site quickly and easily

We hope that the above information has convinced you that broken links must be promptly identified and appropriate measures taken to eliminate them. There are two ways to do this work:

1. Manually.
2. Using specialized software.

Let's consider the advantages and disadvantages of both options so that you can choose the right solution for yourself.

Finding broken links manually

This solution is used in practice only if we are talking about working with a small site, such as a landing page or a site whose structure includes no more than 5-10 pages. The essence of the work will be that you simply sequentially go through all the links that exist here, click on them and make sure that they open correctly. It is clear that it is not possible to check the functionality of all the links on large sites manually. At the very least, it will take too long and be ineffective.

You can also check through search engines. In this case, you simply enter the corresponding URL of the site, follow all the links that appear in the search results and systematically follow each of them, checking whether it is available or not. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that in this case you need to enter the main address of the resource, and as a result, other pages will be shown to you in the search results.

Detecting broken links using specialized software

The modern IT technology market offers a fairly wide variety of software solutions that allow you to quickly check the technical condition of a site and identify broken links on it, if any. Now let's look at several of the most popular solutions:

• Google Search Console. One of the most popular tools today, developed by Google for webmasters. It is completely free to use and with its help you can perform a comprehensive analysis of the technical condition of your resource. The basic information that you will need to start working is presented in the "Indexing" section. Next, you need to go to the "Pages" tab. Here you will see a general analytical report, which, among other things, will list the errors detected on the site, as well as detailed information about each of them. This is what will allow you to see existing problems and take appropriate measures to eliminate them.
• Yandex Webmaster. This platform is an analogue of the previous option, but only from Yandex. With its help, you can also quickly and free of charge identify broken links. To do this, you need to connect the tool to your site, and then go to the "Links" section, and then click on the "Broken links" option. After that, a report will open in front of you, divided into 3 main sections: information about external links, information about internal links and information about outgoing links. If broken links are detected in any of these blocks, the program will display it in the corresponding column. To get more detailed information, you will need to go to the corresponding tab.
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider. This program is designed for parsing data, allowing you to quickly identify problems in SEO optimization of the site. It can be used on devices with the Windows, Linux, macOS operating systems. There is a free version here, within which you can check up to 500 URLs for broken links, redirects and other errors. If you want to work without restrictions, you will need to purchase a paid version of the program at a price of $ 259 per year of use. To work with these tools, you must initially install it on your computer. Further work is carried out automatically, identifying broken links and exporting errors along with the original URLs to the developer or specialist for correction. Among other things, here you can also monitor directions, determine their chains and cycles. Such a product will be especially useful when auditing a site transferred to a new hosting. There is no mobile version of this offer, and the interface here will be exclusively in English.
• Ahrefs. The service is designed to perform a comprehensive SEO analysis of sites. Among other things, it can also identify broken links. It is presented as a classic paid web application. The minimum subscription cost is $ 129 per month of use. Here you can simultaneously manage up to 5 projects and conduct a comprehensive analysis of the link mass, key queries, analyze competitors. Reports are provided in a visual form with dashboards. At the top of them, information about internal and external broken links will be placed, and a little lower - all broken links, anchors, backlinks. The convenient thing is that with the help of this tool you can perform a comprehensive analysis of incoming links for the entire domain or individual pages, as well as see the total number of sites that link to you and create infographics on the dynamics of links for any period of time. High functionality and clarity of the information received are the main advantages of the Ahrefs service. If we talk about the disadvantages, then here it is worth highlighting first of all the lack of a free version, a mobile application, a Russian-language interface.
• Xenu’s Link Sleuth. This is a free application developed specifically for the Windows operating system. In order to use it to detect broken links, you will need to initially install the program on your computer. The tool is capable of checking not only internal but also external links, as well as images, plugins, frames, backgrounds, style sheets, local image maps, scripts. The report will display a list of URLs that will be constantly updated. Additionally, you can sort them by certain criteria, ultimately receiving an option that will be most convenient for your subsequent work. Among the main advantages of this program are its free nature and the ability to send reports via e-mail. Broken links can be rechecked, which can also be considered an undeniable plus. But only those who work on devices with the Windows operating system will be able to use Xenu’s Link Sleuth. As in other options, there is no Russian-language interface and mobile version.
• Online Broken Link Checker. This is an online page scanner that allows you to identify broken links. It is presented to users as a web application. If the volume of pages planned for scanning does not exceed 3000, then this product will be free for you to use. If the volume of upcoming work is larger, then you will have to purchase a paid subscription. With its help, you can work with both internal and external links, including identifying outdated ones among them. To start working with the scanner, you will need to enter the site URL in the appropriate line and a special verification code, which activates subsequent work. After launch, all broken links and errors that the program detects on your site will appear on the screen. Users highly appreciated the simplicity of the program interface, as well as the ease of use in practice, the ability to identify broken links even in HTML code. There is also no Russian-language interface or mobile application. The functionality is quite limited. But you shouldn't expect too much here, since this service was developed specifically to detect broken links.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that regardless of which tool you decide to use to automatically check your site for broken links, it is important to perform this work at least once a month. Thanks to this, you will promptly identify the problem and fix it before the pages of your site are re-submitted for checking and indexing.

Ways to fix broken links

If you see that there are broken links on your site through manual checking or using automated software packages, it is important to understand what to do in this situation. The fact is that they cannot be left as is, because the consequences can be extremely negative for your site, as we have already discussed above. Therefore, it is important to fix them. The sequence of actions in this case will directly depend on what links we are talking about:

1. Outgoing broken links. These are the links that will lead to a non-working or deleted page on another resource. If you no longer see the point in using such a link, if you are sure that its absence will not negatively affect the content of the page itself, you can simply delete it. Otherwise, you will need to replace it with a working one. To do this, you need to inform the site owner that his page is non-working and wait until he fixes the error.
2. Internal broken links. Here we are talking about those links that are placed on your site and lead to its pages, albeit other ones. The first thing to check here is which page is no longer accessible. If you deleted it by mistake, then think about how you could restore it. If the page is simply no longer relevant, then you need to think about where to redirect the no longer needed link. If the problem arose as a result of an incorrect transfer, then you need to make the appropriate adjustments, make sure that your link becomes working again.
3. Back broken links. This is a link that will lead to your site from third-party sources. The only way to solve this problem is to contact the resource owner, tell him about the problem and ask him to solve it. If you initially chose a quality resource for placing external links, then with a high degree of probability such a request will not be denied.

Let us repeat that such actions should be performed only if you are sure that you may need such a link in the future, that is, you would like to save it. Otherwise, it will be much easier to initially delete such a problematic link.

Ways to remove broken links

In order not to irritate users, not to run into additional stations from search engines, it is better to delete unnecessary broken links. If we are talking about a page that is no longer relevant, then you can do nothing at all in this case. Just wait for re-indexing and then search bots themselves will remove this page from the index during the next check. But still, if the reason is different, then it is better to delete such a link yourself. In this case, the best solution would be to use tools developed specifically for webmasters. Your actions will directly depend on what tools you decide to use in this case:

1. Yandex Webmaster. Go to the "Tools" section, and then from all possible options select the "Removing pages from search" tab. Here in the corresponding window you will have to enter the URL address that you would like to remove.
2. Google Search Console. Here we are interested in the "Indexing" section, and then - "Removals". Now we create a request from the URL of the page we plan to delete.

In any case, after completing these tasks, you will need to analyze the results and make sure that the page that is no longer relevant to you is no longer in the results.

Additional recommendations for working with broken links

Working with broken links, identifying them, and fixing them is a fairly labor-intensive task, but it is still clearly not worth neglecting. To ensure that your work here is as effective as possible, use the additional recommendations:

• Make it a rule to perform a comprehensive technical audit of the site at intervals of 1 or 2 times a month. These tasks are performed using specialized tools, so they will require a minimum of time and effort from you. As a result, you will receive a detailed and structured report that will show you how correctly your site works, what problems exist, and even in some cases will provide recommendations for eliminating the identified error.
• The page with the 404 error must be designed in advance, placing links to the relevant sections of your site on it, which may be useful for users. In this case, you will minimize their dissatisfaction and reduce the negative impact of the missing page.
• If we are talking about backlinks or important links, contact the owners of the relevant resources with a request to fix such an error. Do not wait for the initiative to come from them, because by and large you may not even wait for this.
• Any problem identified must be processed and fixed. Do not leave everything to chance, do not wait until broken links accumulate on your site and lead to the fact that search bots simply block this section, considering it no longer working.
• Constantly monitor how search engines work in terms of site indexing. You must understand how this work is carried out. This is what will allow you to keep this process under control and instantly respond to the corresponding changes in the algorithms.

By regularly following these simple recommendations, you will be able to keep the link mass from my site under complete control, preventing problems, including broken links.

Let's summarize

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