Broken Link: Explanation and Recommended Broken Link Checker

Have you ever, when you are going to visit a website, a 404 error page comes out instead? Well, the occurrence of broken links can cause this on any website/blog. A broken link is a situation where loading or redirection to a link stops due to a broken link. Many things can cause broken links on a page.

What you should pay attention to is the effect of a broken link on one of the posts or pages on your site. It is possible that your website’s ranking in the SERP or search results will decrease. Therefore, you must understand very well broken links and ways to check and fix these broken links.

What are Broken Links and What are the causes of Broken Links?

To avoid broken links, of course, you have to understand first what broken links are. In short, a broken link is a link or URL link that is damaged or dead. Damage to this link results in the inaccessibility of the page by internet users, resulting in a 404 error page message.

Actually, broken links are not only the result of the fault of the website owner. Sometimes, these broken links can also occur in external links that you include in each content. So, this can also affect your site’s ranking in search results.

Cause of broken links

Generally, the cause of broken links is that the website owner typed the wrong domain name. Another cause of broken links is that the website has changed its domain name. Well, these two things will make internet users unable to access the intended page. Then, what are the causes of a broken link?

• Error typing in the URL address.
• Changing website address or domain name.
• Changed web directory.
• The 404 error page cache has not been cleared.
• Incomplete DNS (Domain Name Server) settings.

Bad effects caused by broken links

The occurrence of such damage makes the link inaccessible, which can be bad for your website. What are the bad effects? The following are the bad effects caused by broken links.

• Disappear from Google’s radar, broken links will be detected by Google as links that are dead and don’t work anymore. So, Google will remove it from search results.
• Decreasing rankings in the SERP, if in the content, there are lots of broken or dead links, then Google will judge the site as not of high quality. As a result, the ranking of your site will decrease in search results.
• Annoying users, the final result of broken links is disturbing users. When users are looking for information and get your site as a resource but can’t access it, of course, this will make users uncomfortable.

How to Check and Fix Broken Links

Broken links are one of the problems on a website that can have a negative impact on search result rankings. However, how to find out the existence of broken links in any content on your site? Of course, you don’t need to check for broken links in each content individually.

There is an easy way to check broken links and find out at once, namely by using a broken link checker. Well, you can use the broken link checker plugin if your site uses WordPress. However, there are also “broken link checkers” online which you can easily find on the internet.

Using a plugin or online broken link checker, you can check and fix broken links by removing or updating URLs.

Broken Link Checker recommendations

On WordPress and the internet itself, you can find tons of tools to check for broken links. To make it easier for you to choose and check for broken links, here are recommendations for broken link checkers online and on WordPress.

1. Brokenlinkcheck – Broken Link Checker

The first recommendation for an online broken link checker is Brokenlinkcheck. You don’t need to install this tool because you can access it easily online.

Just visit Brokenlinkcheck and enter the URL link of your site. So, this tool will check automatically and for free. Well, there are various features that you can use from this one tool, such as checking for dead links, scanning without a number limit, and so on.

2. Broken Link Checker

Well, for WordPress CMS users, you can use this one plugin. The WordPress plugin is Broken Link Checker with over 700,000 installed.

The interesting thing about this plugin is that you can check broken links using this plugin at a certain time. Well, this time you can set it according to your needs and desires. Apart from that, you can also make repairs to the broken links with the available features.

3. Sitechecker

Apart from Brokenlinkcheck, you can also use Sitechecker as an online broken link checker. Sitechecker is a tool to check the presence of broken links on your site.

It can be said, this one tool is one of the SEO tools that provide a full range of features. Such as on-page SEO checkers, SEO blogs, traffic checkers, and others. Sitechecker can also help you to review broken links, both internal and external. Interestingly, you can scan up to 100 website pages for free.

4. Tool Dead Link Checker

The next online broken link checker is the Dead Link Checker Tool. This tool can help you thoroughly scan broken links on your website. Interestingly, this one tool can scan several sites at once.

Well, apart from multi-checks, you can also check broken links on your site regularly. Later, all the results of the scanning and checking will be sent via your email.

5. SEMrush

As we all know, SEMrush is one of the highly recommended SEO tools. Well, one of the features that SEMrush offers is checking your website for problems on a regular basis.

With this feature, later you will get regular reports via email. The report contains various problems and errors that occur on your website. So, from this report, you can fix various errors including broken links.

6. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a tool for websites. Website owners often use this tool. Usually, Google Search Console is used as a tool in digital marketing. However, it turns out that another function of Google Search Console is to check for broken links on websites.

Well, you can use the coverage feature. This is a feature for scanning broken links in real time. Later, all the scanning results will be displayed in the Google Search Console report.

Broken links are one of the causes of a decrease in website ranking and performance in Google SERP and other search engines. Well, one of the causes of broken links is due to a link-writing error by the site owner or due to a change in the domain name.

In order for your site to avoid the bad effects caused by broken links, you can regularly use various broken link checkers. This broken link checker is a tool that you can use to check and also fix various broken links present on your site.