Everything You Need to Know about Broken Links

Hyperlinks are the lifeline of the web. Linking between webpages is a crucial feature. When everything is functioning properly, all the links on your website will lead to the desired destination. But, there are times when these links go bad. A page may be unavailable or deleted. An image might be missing or not load. A resource or website you link to may disappear. Someone may move a page or post and not update those who link to it. These are referred to as broken links and may also be called link rots or dead links. That’s why you can find a dead link scanner for checking your links.

Reasons for Broken Links

There are several reasons why broken links may occur. Some of them are:

• You may have used the wrong URL for the link. This can happen if you make a mistake or type when you are entering the URL into the <href> tag.
• The destination website may have removed the resource to which you linked to. This occurs when images are used without permission, content gets old or when the webmaster decides to remove something.
• The destination website shifts to a new URL. This could happen due to a change in domain name or from an acquisition or merger.
• The destination website doesn’t exist anymore. There are numerous reasons why a website is taken down or the content is removed.

Figuring out why a link is not working is just as important as finding a link in the first place. The most obvious reason is that if you know why the link is broken, you can fix the problem. You cannot leave the links broken because they can have an impact on your SEO. If you have too many broken links, the website may be deemed abandoned and neglected. Google is known to determine the quality of a website through broken links. Therefore, you need to use a broken links scanner for constantly checking the quality of a website and fix them.

The impact of a dead link shouldn’t be ignored as these can influence user experience, which affects your SEO. The primary reason search engines change algorithms is because they want to provide a better experience and search for users. While search engines understand that there may be broken links, users are going to get annoyed and frustrated. They are not as forgiving and this can affect your reputation. Whether you have just one dead link or several, every visitor on your page will determine their decision based on experience, usability, content and load time.

If there is a broken link on your website and they are unable to access any content, they will move to a different website where they can find the information they need. The less time they stay on your website, the bounce rate will go higher. Thus, you need to find the broken links to avoid this and the simplest and fastest way to do this is with a good dead link scanner so you can fix the links and keep visitors coming.