Broken links present you with three problems that you need to fix.
First, visitors to your site will be hacked off with broken links. Whether the link is to an external website or an internal post/page, seeing that the 404 page does not inspire confidence and may cause a quick exit from the site. There is nothing positive about a visitor finding a broken link. Ultimately, broken links will impact your site’s reputation and credibility.
Second, broken links can mean that your visitors will not find what you want them to find. You’ve worked hard to create the right links to take them to products. Blog posts and maybe affiliate links. The broken link means they will never get there and all that creative work is missed.
Third, broken links do nothing for your domain ranking and google ranking. Valid links make it easier for spiders to crawl and index your site. Broken links make it difficult for the spider to index your site and pages can be missed altogether.
What’s more broken links can occur at any time – during page creation, linked site upgrades and also when the target website just closes down.
So, how do I find broken links…. well I find the best way is to use a website that is dedicated to finding broken links like Dr Link Check. Or better still Richard will find the Broken Links and fix them for you as part of a low-cost monthly Maintenance solution for WordPress websites – check out what Richard can do.
