Broken Links

Broken links are like detours that lead nowhere on your website. When visitors click on a broken link, instead of reaching their destination, they hit a dead end (usually seeing a "404 Page Not Found" error). This creates a frustrating experience for your visitors and can hurt your website's performance in search results.

Think of your website as a city with roads (links) connecting different locations (pages). A broken link is like a road that suddenly ends or leads to a building that no longer exists.

Why Should You Care About Broken Links?

Broken links can:

• Frustrate your visitors who can't find what they're looking for
• Damage your reputation as a trustworthy source of information
• Hurt your search engine rankings since search engines value websites that provide good user experiences
• Waste your "SEO power" by directing it to pages that don't exist

How Our Broken Links Tool Helps You

Our Broken Links tool automatically scans your content to find and display links that aren't working properly. The tool runs a check weekly to keep your information up to date, so you don't have to manually test every link on your website.

Using the Broken Links Tool

Finding the Tool

1. Go to the Content Analysis page
2. Scroll down to the "Broken Links" section

How to View Your Broken Links

The Broken Links tool has two easy-to-use filters:

1. Project dropdown: Choose which project you want to check for broken links
2. Cluster dropdown: Narrow down to a specific cluster, or view all clusters

Once you've selected a project (and optionally a cluster), the tool will display a table with all the broken links found in that selection.

Understanding the Broken Links Table

The table shows you everything you need to know about each broken link:

• Page Name: The title of the page where the broken link appears
• Page URL: The web address of the page containing the broken link
• Link Text: The text that visitors can click on (the clickable words)
• Target URL: The destination that the link is supposed to lead to (but doesn't work)
• Link Type: Whether it's an internal link (to another page on your site) or an external link (to another website)

What To Do When You Find Broken Links

When you discover broken links, you have several options to fix them:

For Internal Links (Links to Other Pages on Your Site):

1. Update the link: If the page has moved to a new location, change the link to point to the correct URL
2. Create the missing page: If it's an important page that should exist, consider creating it
3. Remove the link: If the content is no longer relevant, you might choose to remove the link entirely

For External Links (Links to Other Websites):

1. Find an updated version: Check if the content has moved to a new URL on the same website
2. Find an alternative source: Look for another reputable website with similar information
3. Remove the link: If you can't find a suitable replacement, you may need to remove the reference

Best Practices for Link Management

Regular Checks

Even though our tool automatically checks links weekly, it's good practice to:

• Review your broken links report monthly
• Pay special attention to your most important or most visited pages

When Creating New Content

• Double-check all links before publishing new content
• Be cautious when linking to smaller websites or older content, as these tend to change or disappear more frequently
• Consider using links to established, reputable sources which are less likely to disappear

Quick Fix Priority Guide

If you have many broken links to fix, focus on these first:

1. Links on your most popular pages
2. Links in important content like product pages or key resources
3. Internal links (within your own website)

Common Questions

"How often are my links checked?"

The system automatically checks your links once a week.

"Why did a link suddenly break?"

Links can break for many reasons:

• The website you linked to might have reorganized their content
• The page might have been removed
• The website might have shut down
• There could be a temporary technical issue with the linked website

"Should I fix all broken links immediately?"

While it's good to address broken links promptly, prioritize fixing links on your most important pages first. For less critical content, you can schedule regular maintenance sessions to address broken links in batches.

"What if I need to check a specific link right now?"

The tool performs automatic weekly checks. If you need to verify a link immediately, you can manually visit the URL in your browser to check if it's working.