Impact of broken links in SEO

Another important factor that affects the optimization of the site is the links that cause a site to gain more credibility; there are different types of links, each of which acts as a vote in the site ranking, more quality backlinks increase the ranking of your website in the search results page, but just as quality backlinks are effective in SEO, incorrect backlinks have an impact on it, which causes getting a 404 error by clicking on it, which by repeating this for the user, he/she will leave the site and get a negative user experience, and if it happens to multiple users, it will eventually cause the site to get low website ranking, and you do not get the desired results, The same is also true for internal links if the linking is not done properly, clicking on the link will cause the user to get a  404 error

 as well as a negative experience.

What is a link?

Links allow you to click on it to be redirected to another page and allow users to access different pages easily.

Link types:

1- Internal link:

One of the key points in the  internal SEO  of the site is the use of internal links, which causes the user to view other pages of the site and receive the answer to their questions as soon as possible, which causes the search engine to consider the site credible and gives a high ranking to it.

2- External link:

An external link is actually a link that refers to an external domain; in other words, you can say that the links you receive from other websites are, in fact, external links, and also the links which someone else has given to your site is considered as an external link because they also receive external links from your site, which increases the value and credibility of it because Google pays more attention to others opinion about your website more.



In other words, any text or image that you click on to take you to another page is called a link, and if another site or domain links to one of your pages, it is called a  backlink, in general, there are two types of backlinks, which we will discuss in the following, links can also be duplicate and duplicate.

- Dofollow link:

Dofollow links are the ones that the search engine follows.

- Nofollow links:

There are links which the search engine does not follow.

There are different types of links that have a great impact on on-site  optimization, which are analyzed by Google algorithms to rank sites through them, but if the links are not created properly, it Will have negative impacts, so it is necessary to be able to identify broken-links.

What is a broken link?

Broken-links are the ones that you won't reach the page you need by clicking on it, and you usually encounter a 404 error.

How to find broken-links?

There are several tools you can use to identify broken-links. Here we will mention a few of them.

- Google Webmaster Tools:

One of the tools through which you can find broken-links is  Google Webmaster Tools, which is provided to site owners for free, through which you can analyze the site and find broken-links on the site and try to repair them.

- Xenu Link Sleuth:

Another free tool that is recommended to use to check the links on your site is Xenu Link Sleuth, which you can easily check the links and repair all broken-links through it.

- Google Search Console:

Search Console is a free tool that allows site owners to review the performance of their site and provide relevant reports.

Website owners can

optimize their site

through the information obtained in this way, it should be mentioned that familiarity with the search console and its capabilities is essential for people who have a site; one of the features of this tool is to find broken-links on the site.

- Screaming Frog:

One of the free tools to find broken links is Screaming Frog; you just need to enter your website address in the search box of this tool to check your site and identify the broken links on your website.

- Ahrefs:

Ahrefs   is a complete optimization tool, which is used by many  SEO experts  to analyze websites; in addition to finding broken links, you can also use this tool to search for keywords and analyze competitors to increase the ranking of your site.

Ahrefs has a feature by which you can regularly check your site to find broken links, and you can also check your site daily, weekly, and monthly and repair all broken links.

- Link Checker plugin for WordPress sites:

By downloading the Broken Link Checker plugin in  WordPress sites, you can view the broken links and then repair all of them to prevent the site ranking from decreasing.

How do links affect SEO?

1- Creating a negative user experience:

In fact, the links are created for easier access of the user to different pages of the site so that they can easily reach the topic they are looking for, but if the links on the site are broken, the user cannot get the answer to their questions, and he/she has a negative experience and eventually leaves the website.

2- Users won't trust you:

Imagine that the user has entered your site and is faced with links; if there are lots of links is, the user won't trust your website again and thinks that all the content on your site is of poor quality.

3- Wasting all your efforts in the field of site optimization:

There are many strategies for

site optimization

That you should spend a lot of time on implementing them properly, now imagine that after a lot of effort, you have not checked your links, and there are many links on your site. As a result, your efforts will be wasted.

How to repair links:

Once you have reviewed the site and found the links in it, it is time to repair all the links to prevent your site from a decrease in rankings.

- Correct the links:

There may have been a typographical error while typing the links, in which case you should correct it.

- Remove:

You may have linked to another website on your site which may not exist anymore after a while for any other reason, in which case you should delete the link so that the user does not encounter an error.

- Re-link:

If the website which you linked to has been redesigned, you can replace the current link, which you should just find and replace.

- Update your website:

You may have an old page where all the links are invalid due to the many changes of the sites over time, so at this time, the best thing to do is to update your content.

Last word:

In general,

optimizing a site

is of great importance in achieving success for website owners, and they do their best to be able to optimize their website as soon as possible to get to the top of google search results, one of which, as we mentioned in this article, is to remove links which you can get the help of many tools for doing that; the best solution is to learn the exact way to work with all of these tools and repair all links that may be on your website, so that there is nothing to stop you from getting high ranking in google search engine results due to the fact that by repairing the links you will get users to trust your website as well as your content, so you can attract

more traffic to your website

which is one of the main factors of being successful in this field.