What is Broken Link in Website: Improper Url created for the website’s pages or changed the website URL without updating the URL. Whenever any user browses your sites and clicks the link user may be directed to 404 error page and it will not direct you on that page you are searching.

Broken Link Definition:

A broken link is also known as a dead link. A broken link will hurt your SEO because when google crawls your website and if he found 404 error in your website then Google will stop crawling and indexing of your pages in search engines.

What causes broken link on a website

• Whenever a website owner change the name of Url for any pages and forget to change internal links in the pages
• In the content of website pages linked with pdf, powerpoint, and videos that have been deleted.

Different types of Broken Link Errors:

• 404 not found
• Server not found
• Timeout
• 429 Unknown error
• 500 internal server error
• 403 Forbidden

How to analyze broken link in SEO

There are a number of free online broken link checker tool to find broken links in a website:

• Google Webmaster Tools: The best way to find broken link is a google webmaster tool. This is a free tool provided by Google. Once you get the information about broken link you can analyze the report to fix.

Step 1: Login to your Google Search Console account and click crawl Errors to check the Broken links and site Errors

Step 2: Here you can see Top 1000 pages with errors.

• Online broken link checker tools websites: There are lots of free online broken link analyzer websites available on the internet put your website URL there and download broken links reports.  These websites will scan the whole website in search of broken links.

         Top 5 free online Broken Link Checker websites list:

1. http://www.ranksignals.com/
2. https://www.deadlinkchecker.com/
3. https://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/broken-links.php
4. https://smallseotools.com/websites-broken-link-checker/

        Top 2 paid broken link checker tools: Register and enjoy the free services of semrush

1. https://www.semrush.com/
2. https://ahrefs.com/

• Broken link analysis WordPress plugins: Install free broken link Checker plugin in WordPress to get details of a dead link in the WordPress website, We can see 40 broken links on my website. Analyse all of their 40 broken link pages

Step 1: Install WordPress Plugin:  Broken Link Checker

Step 2: Click on Setting and you can see on my website www.bloggertarget.com 27 broken link is present. You can add your email id here, whenever this plugin detects any broken links they will send you email notification to the registered email id.

Step 3: Select the box according to your requirements.

Step 3: Select box which links to check

Step 4:  Select Protocols and APIs

Step 5: Advanced Settings

Step 6: Click the broken link in tools.

Here you can see in my website total 27 broken link is present.  This will not direct users on that page users are searching.

How to fix the broken link in WordPress Website:

In my website more than 25 broken links are present. For redirection of broken links select boxes which you want to fix but never select affiliate links.

Step 1: First Select all the boxes which you want to fix and click Fix redirects from the drop-down menu.

 

Broken link analysis importance:

• If any users visit a website for any information and facing 404 error again and again then user will move to the other websites to get information.
• It will reduce your website traffic and returning Users also.
• Website conversion rates will go down.

Read more:

•  Heading tags in Seo 
• What is a robots.txt file in SEO and how to create for WordPress website
• Tips to increase website loading time 

Here i have mention 3 methods to find out broken links in the website. Broken link will affect your website ranking and usability so that it is very important to redirect and update all the broken links.

I Hope this article will help you to understand what is broken in SEO and how to find broken links in websites. If you are using different WordPress plugin for broken link analysis than let us know via Comment.