Did you know that too much broken links can adversely affect your rank with search engines? What about your readers, what would they feel if they click a link and they arrived on a blank error page? Well, you have to do something, you have to locate those broken links and fix them.
Depending on the number of links you placed in your web pages or in your posts (or how big is your website), it is time consuming to check those links manually one by one, either internally or externally, but as much as possible you should always avoid the “page not found” error. If you are not messing up with your internal link structure, you should find no problems with the links you placed between your own web pages. But with external links, you have no control over the websites you have linked to. If they changed the URL of their pages, delete a page, move their website or if they closed down their website for good, those external links you placed pointing to their website will be a problem.
I will share with you a simple solution, there is a software that you can use to check your broken links, I know what you’re thinking, don’t worry, it’s absolutely free. The software is called Xenu Link Sleuth, it’s easy to use and you can immediately see those broken links and know where to start fixing them. It is really recommended to check all the links you created in your website regularly, you may not know who is reading your articles or posts and you don’t want your readers to be frustrated if the page they clicked is an error page “page not found“. When you start using this checker by the way, I recommend setting the Parallel Threads to 1 – 5 in the Options Menu – Preferences. And make sure you read the instructions and notes in its website carefully just to make sure the software works perfectly for you.
For those who are using WordPress in their paid hosting account, you can use the plug-in Broken Link Checker. It’s easy to use and again of course it’s free. But unlike the software mentioned above, with this plug-in you can set a time to check or monitor all the links in your web pages if they are valid. The default time is 72 hours, meaning all old links will be rechecked after this period expires which will check new links you placed as well.
I’m sharing this to you because I messed up with my internal link structure two days ago. I changed the operating system in my hosting account from windows to linux and this problem occured. I’m not really sure what happened but the permalinks in two of my websites became a mess. And you can imagine the agony in my face when each page I clicked in my recent posts showed the “page not found” error. Fortunately those two checkers are available and greatly helped me a lot. Not only did it help me fix my permalinks, I also discovered plenty of broken links to websites I have linked. Some pages were deleted and some were moved; although I was able to fix most broken links, some of them have to be deleted permanently.
I do hope you will enjoy checking those bad links of yours and try fixing them. Try to avoid being penalized by the Google and other search engines and try not to disappoint your readers when they get directed to an error page. Don’t miss any important articles, subscribe to my FEED.
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Source:http://anyone-can-earn.com/blog/
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