Impact of broken links in SEO

DotNek Software Development 8 minute(s) read

Last updated: Feb 17, 2021

Site optimization is very important and many experts are working in this field to earn money by doing so, different factors are effective in SEO, such as meta description, site loading speed, site map and etc.

Another important factor that affects the optimization of the site are 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 increases the ranking of your website in the search results page, but just as quality backlinks are effective in SEO, incorrect backlinks has 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 which 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 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 which 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, and it should be mentioned that familiarity with the search console and its capabilities is essential for people who have a site which 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.

- Broken 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 broken 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 broken links, if there are lots of broken 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 efforts, you have not checked your links and there are many broken links on your site, as a result your efforts will be wasted.

How to repair broken links:

Once you have reviewed the site and found the broken links in it, it is time to repair all the broken 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 broken links:

You may have linked to another site 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 it.

- Update your site:

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 a great importance in achieving success for site owners, and they do their best to be able to optimize their site 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 broken 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 broken links that may be on your site, 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 broken links you will get users 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.