Broken Links and Dead Links: A Guide to Identifying, Fixing.

In the Web, quality is going to be one factor affecting user experience, search rankings, and performance. Among the two most common enemies that webmasters and SEO professionals are always facing is the broken link and dead links. These issues do not just frustrate the user but also damage your credibility and ranking. Here's everything you'll need to know about broken and dead links: what are they, impact, find them, and actionable strategies for fixing and preventing them.

What Are Broken Links and Dead Links?

Broken Link
It is a link on a webpage that doesn't point anywhere it was supposed to. When you click on such a broken link, you usually get an error page, such as "404 Not Found". This happens either because the intended resource or webpage is simply not available, deleted, or moved to another location with no redirect in place.
Dead Link
A dead link refers to links that were functioning, leading to active web pages but no longer function. Dead links most commonly occur when external websites disappear, domains expire, or web content is permanently taken offline.
Difference between Broken Links and Dead Links
Broken Links: It may be due to internal mistakes, such as typos, misplaced URLs, etc.
Dead Links: These arise mainly due to external changes like removal or moving of web content without proper redirects.

Effects of Broken and Dead Links On Your Website
There are negative impacts of having broken or dead links to your website. They include;

1. Poor User Experience (UX)
Just imagine , how the user feels when he is reading through a website, clicking on an interesting link, only to see him get a "404 Page Not Found" error message.

What that does is break the flow of the experience and frustratingly drives the users away from the site.

2. Detrimental Effect on the Webpage Ranking in SERPs

Broken links negate your site in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. Search engines like sites with smooth navigation and working links. Broken links cause crawling errors that might negatively impact indexing, hence hurting your ranks.

3. Lower Conversion Rates
If links to key product pages, blog posts, or sign-up forms are broken, users cannot engage with your content or complete desired actions, thus lost opportunities, and lower conversions.

4. Poor reputation of your brand
Broken links on a website tell that you are not paying attention and maintaining the website, which subsequently lowers the credibility and trustworthiness of your brand.

5. Indirect Penalty by Search Engines
Though there is no penalty by search engines directly, broken links degrade the crawlability of your site, thereby your rankings. For e-commerce sites, it can be critical as broken links tend to decrease sales.

Common Reasons Causing Dead and Broken Links

URL Changes without Redirects: Pages are moved, but there are no good redirects set up for the old URLs.
Typos in URLs: A misspelling can make the link unusable.
Site Redesigns: Significant changes to site layout or design cause many internal links to break
Pages and Files deleted from the Server Content: Pages or files are eliminated from the server and there are no 301 redirects set up.
Domain Expirations: Dead links are caused by external domains that have either expired or shut down.
Third-Party Content Removed: When some contents you're linking to are deleted from the source site.

How to Identify Broken and Dead Links on Your Site
Broken and dead links are a part of your maintenance checklist to keep your site healthy and clean. Here are some tools and methods to identify them:

1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console can help you identify crawl errors, especially the infamous 404 errors resulting from dead links. It shows which pages contain dead internal and external links.

2. Screaming Frog SEO Spider:
Crawler that scans your site entirely to detect broken links, redirects and other technical SEO issues
3. Ahrefs:
Ahrefs has a Broken Links Checker that will detect dead links on your website but also measures broken backlinks (Backlinks to your pages from elsewhere).

4. Dead Link Checker:
Online tool to scan one or more pages by detecting dead links or scans the entire website for dead links.

5. Broken Link Checker: WordPress plugin
If you are on WordPress, this plugin scans your website for dead or broken links and offers an easy method to repair them.

How to Fix Dead or Broken Links
After identifying the dead or broken links, the next thing is to fix them. There are several ways to deal with dead or broken links, and they include the following:

1. Setting up 301 redirects
If a page has permanently moved to a new URL, In that time to include a 301 redirect from the old page to the new one, both for users and search engines.
2-Change or Update Links
If the external links point to dead content, find similar updated content in which to link.
Correct Typographical Errors
Sometimes, the issue is something very simple, like a typo. Double-check spelling and punctuation on URLs.

4. Restore Lost Content

If the link to deleted content is actually relevant, you might want to reinstall the page or recreate it at the original URL.

5. Create a Custom 404 Page
One should, therefore, design a good 404 page so that even when users encounter broken links, their experience will still be good. Add search functionality as well as popular pages that might be directly accessed.

Preventing Broken and Dead Links in the Future
Maintenance of your website can prevent much of the broken and dead links. Here are best practices:
1. Regular Website Audits
Use Screaming Frog or Google Search Console regularly to flag new issues every few months.
2-Track External Links
The most probable dead links are the external links. Run a link-checking tool periodically to ensure all the outbound links are live.
3-Redirection Plan
Have a plan in place for redirecting pages before they are deleted or relocated. Utilize 301 redirects to limit broken links
4. Use Relative URLs for Internal Links
Using relative URLs rather than absolute ones also greatly simplifies dealing with internal links should you migrate or clone your site to a different domain or subdomain.
Design Content Management Procedures
If you are working in a team, develop procedures for how deleted pages will be handled, including update and redirect procedures.

Case Study:Impact of Link Fixing
Most companies have seen dramatic changes in how their website ranks in the search engines and how their visitors interact once broken links are corrected. Among them, for example:

E-commerce Webshop: The online retailer cleared 300 product page links and, following that, its conversion rates improved by 15%.

Blog Educational: An educational blog cleaned more than 100 links to articles on research papers and became 20% more visible in the search engines afterwards.
Such examples show how debugging broken links can improve user experience and search engine performance.

Conclusion
Broken and dead links are a little more than a nuisance ; they impact how people perceive your website for SEO, user experience, and brand credibility. Regularly auditing for broken and dead links can help assure the functionality, professionalism, and friendliness of a site.

Some of the tools that assist in identifying these links include Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Ahrefs. Aspects such as the deployment of 301 redirects, the use of custom 404 pages, and putting up link management protocols will keep your site running at optimum.

Written By :

Kanhu Charan Behera