In the digital marketing world, a broken link is more or less a heart breaking Valentine’s scene. Broken links are hyperlinks on your website that lead to non-existent web pages. They can be either internal (aka inbound) or external (aka outbound) links. They lead to pages in or out of the website, respectively. When a broken link is clicked on, users are confronted with a disappointing error message — most commonly known as the “404 error.”

Reasons for broken links

A website link does not work because the website is facing one or more of the following problems:

1. An improper URL entered for the link by the website owner.
2. The destination website removed the linked web page (causing what is known as a 404 error).
3. The destination website permanently moved or no longer exists.
4. The user has software or is behind a firewall that blocks access to the destination website (such as an Intranet site or a restricted access area on a website).
5. Typing errors in the URL creation (e.g. examle.com, while users need to type example.com).
6. Pages removed by third-party resources.

Broken links can create problems for website visitors, making them unable to access a required resource or information. If that happens, they would start using another site to find the necessary information. Even the best of websites are never completely safe against having broken links. However, these best websites put in extra efforts to find and fix them. Broken links are those little “troublemakers” that have to be caught before they lead to big consequences. This is a very important part of website improvement.

Possible impacts of broken links on your website and business

a)   Broken links and usability

Easily getting what is expected is a golden rule of usability. And this rule is broken with broken links! When users stumble upon a 404 page and get frustrated, it is harder for them to achieve their intended goals on your website. This creates a negative overall impression about the site and often results in them immediately bouncing off from your site.

b)   Broken links and SEO

The impact of broken links on SEO is a little different and much deeper. Broken links cause increased bounce rates, decreased session durations, and dropped conversions, which clearly reflect in search rankings.

c)   Broken links and business success

Broken links literally mean lost business opportunities. Potential customers may go away and choose your competitors’ websites. Abandoned buying processes, and in addition, broken links, like every other technical problem on websites undermine your business reputation.

Finding and fixing broken links

While small websites could do fine with manual checks, bigger websites need a more technical approach. There are many useful tools, both free and paid, that help to find broken links.

1. Use of tools like Google Analytics, Xenu, Netpeak Spider, Dead Link Checker, Ahrefs, Broken Link Checker, SEMrush, Chrome extensions like “Check my links” or Domain Hunter Plus, and many more.
2. If the website is built with a CMS, there also are special add-on tools for finding and fixing broken links (modules for Drupal, plugins for WordPress, and so on).
3. For a moved internal page: update all links leading to it. For a deleted internal page: delete all links leading to it from your content, or find something similar worth linking to.
4. In cases of moved or deleted pages, there is also the issue of external links possibly leading to them. This can be found with backlink analysing tools. If these backlinks exist, a 301 redirect is also recommended.
5. For a misspelled internal URL: create a 301 redirect.
6. Customise your 404 pages to be attractive and useful (with a nice design and content suggestions).
7. For a removed third-party page: delete the URL from your content and make sure it looks natural without the link. Alternatively, try to find where the page has moved on the third-party website and update the link. If this is impossible, but you really need that link, you could find similar content elsewhere on the internet instead.