Do you know how important for you to fix broken links in your WordPress site? It is not only important for your customer user experience but also important for SEO ranking. Here in this blog, we will help you to find broken links in your WordPress site and fix them.
Ever click a link of a website and find yourself a dead end where you got a 404 not found error? Tell me how you have felt at that time. Not happy of course. After finding this error you may be promised yourself not to visit that website again. Think about what will happen if your visitors feel that way. Don’t want that right? Then, read this full blog and remove this problem from your site for good.
What you can understand by a broken link?
A broken link is a link that will lead your visitors to a 404 error. That means when your visitors will click on the link for finding more information they will reach a page that will show them not found error. This is not only harmful to your SEO but also it will make your visitors frustrated and leave your site.
Broken links are harmful to both SEO ranking and user experience. Besides, your visitors who have experienced this problem might do not come to your page anymore. No matter how useful content you are providing as they don’t want to see a 404 error in the middle of the content. This is not good for your website at all.
What are the reasons for having broken links?
After knowing that broken links are very harmful to your site, you may want to know the reasons for having these broken links. Here are the reasons for having it:
- Maybe you have changed the site to a new domain.
- URL of the page has changed and redirection hasn’t done.
- Someone has deleted the page.
- Or your redirection is not working correctly.
How can you find and fix broken links in your WordPress website?
You can’t allow having broken links on your WordPress website. Before fixing broken links of your site you need to find that broken link. You can fix WordPress broken links without a plugin or you can remove that as well by using a WordPress plugin. Let’s learn about how to find and fix broken links in your WordPress website.
Identifying broken links in your WordPress site:
Before fixing, you need to find those broken links for maintaining SEO and UX. Here I will provide you three ways to find broken links on your site. Here they are:
- Using Google search console.
- SEMRush tool.
- Use the broken link checker plugin.
Find it with Google search console:
Google search console will provide you information about your site’s traffic, performance, and errors that preventing you from ranking on the search result. Besides, here you can find 404 not found error that is caused by broken links. If you don’t know how to set up your account then read the ultimate guide to google search console.
For finding broken links go to your google search console account and click on the coverage.
After that, click on the 404 not found error. It will lead to a page that will contain all the URLs of the broken link. Finally, click on the export button that is on the top right side. By doing it, you can export all data to a google sheet or you can download excel or CSV files.
Find broken link with SEMRush:
You can also find broken links to your website with the SEMRush tool for free. Sign up on SEMRush and after that, login into your account and click on the site audit on the left side.
Now, enter the domain of your website then, press start audit.
After that, a site audit setting form will pop up. Here, you can set the pages per audit and crawl source. If you are using their free service then you can increase pages. As for free version pages per audit is 100. Finally, click on the start site audit.
Then, you will get an audit report. Now, click on the broken that is marked on the screenshot.
Finally, you will find all the broken links to your site. You can export this result by clicking on the export that is situated on the top right side.
Find broken links with broken link checker plugin:
The last method is removing broken links with WordPress broken link checker plugin. But, it is not a healthy method. As it consumes lots of resources. Many WordPress hosting services block broken link checker plugin for this reason. So, we won’t recommend you to do it.
You need to first go to plugins>> add new and search for broken links in the search box. After that, install and activate it.
Finally, go to tools>> broken links. Then, you will see the URL of the broken links.
Fix broken links on your WordPress website:
After finding the broken links to your site, you have to fix these. There is one system that is redirecting your URL of the broken links to a new URL that is similar to the resource of the broken link resource. Use Redirection plugin for redirecting broken links of your site.
To redirect broken links, go to tools>> Redirection. Then enter the URL of the broken link in the source URL box. After that, fill the target URL box with the URL that you want your redirection to go.
Now, click color-wheel button and select moved permanently redirection. Finally, press add redirection. Your broken link is fixed now.
If you want more detailed information about broken links then read how to redirect a URL in WordPress.
