Broken Links
The purpose of this article is to show how to fix all the broken links on your website, which generate 404 page not found errors.
Sections in this article
Introduction
Broken links are bad for business. They make Google’s job of crawling your website harder and you annoy your customers as they don’t get what they expect.
It’s nothing to be ashamed about that your website has broken links, it happens to us all. But there is a very easy way of getting rid of them and that is with a free piece of software called Xenu Link Sluth.
I've just recently come across this TechSEO360 tool and it's great for auditing your website and it's free for the first 500 pages!
Next steps
To start using Xenu Link Sluth, follow the steps below.
- Download the software from below.
- http://xenus-link-sleuth.en.softonic.com
- Install the software to your pc and run it.
- Open the software, click on File then click on Check URL.
- Now type the name of the website that you would like to check and click on OK.
- You may need to wait for about 30 minutes here, depending on the size of the site that you are searching.
Once Xenu has finished crawling the site for broken links, you’ll then be presented with a list of all the pages on the site and those pages shown in red no longer exist (404 Not Found).
Checking broken links
To see only broken links in the main report window, follow the steps below.
- Click on View.
- Choose Broken links only (CTRL+B).
This will now show you, hopefully, just a few links in red for you to fix. To get more information on the missing page, right click on one of the URLs and click on URL properties. The offending page with a link to the missing page will be shown at the bottom.
You’ll also see a pop up box asking you if you want to see a report of the broken links, this would be handy to have to print out or save. It will give you something to show your boss, a before and after report to indicate the errors that have been removed.
