Why You Need to Fix Broken Site Links
Like many of the things covered on this blog, this sounds pretty straightforward. A link is broken, you fix it; not hard really? Well, you would have thought so, but there are still plenty of sites out there sporting linking cul-de-sacs.
The problem with broken links is two -fold. First up is visitor perception. If somebody is on your site and they keep landing on 404 error pages or are re-directed to the homepage time after time they are probably going to think something strange is afoot. Not good for your reputation and certainly won’t do much to improve conversions.
The second issue is with the search engines. If they see a site full of broken links they are unlikely to perceive it as a decent, authoritative source of information and will index you accordingly. You won’t necessarily be punished, but progression could become more challenging as a consequence.
Also, remember that the search engine crawlers only stay on your site for a short period of time. They don’t pour over each page inspecting every minute detail. No, instead they come in scurry around and follow your internal link thread index what they see and disappear off into the ether once more. If they land on broken pages each times, you are going to take time away from the pages that you’ve actually been working on and want to have promoted.
The best way to detect whether you have broken links or not is to install a program like Google Webmaster Tools (or the Yahoo/Microsoft alternatives if you prefer). Like Analytics, it will sit silently in the coding of your pages and will give you an impression of how the search engines view your site – including of course those pesky dead links.
Sometimes a link will become broken when a target URL changes or you delete a page and forget to update your Sitemap and other internal links to reflect these changes. It’s a common enough issue and is easily done if you don’t have an automated content management system.
The easiest solution of course is to simply delete the offending link and remove the problem. Of course if the page does actually exist and the link itself has been coded wrong, just update it and make sure it reflects the actual destination.
If the page has developed a decent PageRank and you don’t want to throw away all that value by deleting the page outright, you could try to re-direct it to the closest alternative. Don’t do this too often though, you don’t want people thinking your links are taking them to the wrong page consistently. Remember to use a permanent 301 redirect though if this is going to be an ongoing fixture.
If you are having a lot of 404 errors occurring still, make sure you have a bespoke page for them to land on. You don’t want a visitor having to navigate backwards from the generic error page, it’s really not a good sign. If you make the 404 page within the structure and style of your site they can click on another link or you can suggest similar alternatives for them.
Anyway, essentially you don’t want to have broken links on your site. They aren’t particularly professional, add no value and basically have no value at all. So if you’re doing SEO work and are struggling a little, check your Webmaster Tools software and investigate any dead links you might be hiding.
