Why Broken Links are Bad for SEO? Broken Links Response Codes

Do you know that the Broken links are bad for SEO? Have you ever tried to check your broken links online? If you do you will get these broken links response codes. Make sure to remove all the found broken links from your website by either fixing the link or redirecting it to a suitable resource.

Today In this article we are going to cover these topics –

1. Why broken links are bad for SEO?
2. How to find a broken link in WordPress Website?
3. How to fix a broken link?
4. What all are the broken links response codes?
5. How to deal with “404 Page Not Found error”? and
6. How to get backlinks by the broken link method?
7. What can cause broken links?

So, let’s see this one by one.

Why broken links are bad for SEO?

You may have heard that broken links can hurt your SEO. It leaves a negative impact on the search engine crawlers. Do you know why this statement is correct? Well, we all submit our websites to Search Console and other webmaster tools.

We create sitemaps for our website and we submit our sitemaps to the webmaster for regular crawling and indexing. This is what we call best practices of SEO. But, increasing the number of dead links, so-called broken links will have adverse effects. If you do not remove them on time this may be an outcome –

• The website crawling will not be proper
• Search engine spiders may stop crawling your website
• You will lose your keyword rankings
• broken links will turn users away from your website
• It can cause a crawl delay

So, You should fix your broken links on a regular interval. If you don’t know the technicality of fixing it. We will do this for you. Get in touch with us now.

Broken links are like your ex girlfriends, the less you have the easier your life will be 🙂

“OK Ravi”

How to find a broken link on your website?

Finding a dead link on your website is a very easy task. You just need to visit a broken link checker online website and tool. This is what you can do to find broken links on your WordPress website or any other sites.

1. Visit Broken Link Checker Website
2. Enter your domain name without https and www
3. Fill the captcha and
4. Click ‘find broken links’ button

Within minutes you will get the list of broken links containing the different broken link response codes provided below. So, we are hoping that now you have the list of broken links for your website. It may look like this –

Note: You can use paid tools like Ahref to find all available dead links on your website. Ahref will perform a site audit and will give you the list of broken links.

How to fix a broken link?

In all honesty, fixing a broken link is quite an easy task. At the same time, it is super boring. Make sure you have the patience to fix them one by one.

These are the two possible ways to fix broken links –

1. Replace the broken links with live links: 

Depending on how many broken links you find on your website, this could take all of 15 minutes or weeks. The process itself is pretty self-explanatory – find a replacement for the broken link, then replace it on your site.

Oh, and if you’re unsure what the link used to point to, then you can use Wayback Machine to find a suitable link for you.

2. Remove the links from your website

Again, this can be time-consuming if you have a lot of broken links, but the process is straightforward—locate the link in the content, then just remove it. For example – If you got a link that came to your website through the comment section, then to remove that locate the comment and quickly edit your comment to clear the website section.

Isn’t it a super easy task.

What all are the broken links response codes?

Here is the table containing all the broken links response codes which may be seen while you perform a broken link check on your website.

404	Page Not Found: the page/resource doesn’t exist on the server
400	Bad Request: host server cannot understand the URL on your page
bad host	Invalid hostname: server with that name doesn’t exist or is unreachable
bad URL	Malformed URL (e.g. a missing bracket, extra slashes, wrong protocol, etc)
bad code	Invalid HTTP response code : server response violates HTTP spec
empty	Host server returns “empty” responses with no content and no response code
timeout	Timeout: HTTP requests constantly timed out during the link check
reset	The host server drops connections. It is either misconfigured or is too busy.

How to deal with “404 Page Not Found error”?

Many a time when a visitors visits a specific link on your website then they get 404 Page. You need to monitor such results. Mostly 404 Page not found error comes as you do not have the particular resources users are looking for. It can be an image, webpage or any other media or attachments.

The reason could be anything – like, you have deleted the post, you may have no such webpages on your website. But, the important thing is to fix such links to around 404 error pages.

SEO plugins like Rank Math SEO have a “404” monitor inbuilt which can be used to get the list of 404 pages. It will help you fix all such links either by redirecting them to a useful and relevant resource (preferred) or by removing them.

It’s always better to redirect 404 pages to a live and relevant useful resource

“OK ravi”

How to get backlinks by the broken link method?

Yes, you heard right. You can get backlinks from other webmasters if you analyze their website and ask them to redirect or replace their broken links with your live and relevant useful link. This is what you can do to get broken links –

1. Analyze the webmaster website to find all the broken links
2. Once you have the list of broken link then make a list of which links can be replaced by which useful and relevant resource of yours.
3. Email the webmaster with the list you have prepared politely asking them to replace their broken links with your own links
4. Follow up the email on a regular basis
5. Make sure to be gentle and professional when you do this
6. Make sure to provide them links having similar contents

Now, it’s webmaster’s turn to do the needful. In 70% of cases, you may get a negative result. But, need not worry. You have a 25% success rate.

Make it a habit if you want to get regular backlinks using the broken link method. A webmaster can deny your request with different excuses. But, you have to keep your zip tight to handle such situations.

What can cause broken links?

There can be multiple causes for getting a broken link on your website.

1. Renaming or moving a webpage and forgetting to change your internal links.
2. Linking to content (PDFs, videos, etc.) that has been moved or deleted.
3. Linking to a third-party page, and not knowing when they change the URL or move the page.

There may be some other errors that can cause broken links. But, whatever the reasons you have it should be addressed on time.

Broken Links FAQ

Final thoughts on broken links

Broken links are not only waste but they also contribute to poor user experience. That’s why you should make every effort to find and fix all dead links from your website.

Detecting and fixing broken links is an ongoing process, as a part of your sites’ regular SEO Audits. You must perform broken links check every 15 days to boost the health of your links and to increase your regular wealth 🙂

What’s your experience with fixing broken links and backlinks?

Let me know in the comments section below. ?

Thanks for reading.

Have a good day!

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