Whether you have recently been involved in SEO or are a seasoned expert, you must have heard about the concept of “broken links”. So, the question is – what are broken links, and how can they impact our website’s performance?
The term is self-explanatory. Broken links are nothing but hyperlinks that no longer exist. Most often, these pages are either deleted or moved without a redirection setup. When a user follows a broken link, the server returns a 404 (Not Found) error. But since every error code has a consequence, and broken links are no different. Let’s outline a detailed description of these missing links here and how they actually harm the website’s SEO in the first place.
What are Broken Links?
Broken Links, also called Dead Links, are mainly hyperlinks that no longer exist at the moment. In simple terms, when you click these links, you’ll get nothing in return except for the 404 (Not Found) error code.
These broken links are further divided into two categories, namely, Broken Outgoing Links and Broken Backlinks. There are various reasons why broken links can occur, such as the website owner has entered the wrong URL, the URL structure of the site has changed, the external site is no longer available, and many more.
Having broken links on the website is entirely normal for any website; however, too many broken or dead links can lead to a poor user experience. Additionally, it’s a necessary waste of your crawl budget as 404 pages are a dead end.
How Do Broken Links Affect Your Website’s SEO Negatively?
Now that you know what are broken links in SEO, it’s time to outline their negative impacts on your website. There’s no second thought that broken or dead links can harm your website’s SEO because they lead crawlers to nowhere. Moreover, it affects the user experience, which further affects your rankings.
Here’s how broken links harm your website’s SEO.
Poor user experience
Broken links may hinder the user’s search journey, which further increases their frustration and premature exits. It leads to higher bounce rates, which in turn affects your website rankings in the SERPs. You can hire the best digital marketing agency in Delhi to find and fix those dead links for a better user experience.
Crawling disruption
When a crawler clicks the broken link, it simply encounters a 404 error page. Since such pages lead nowhere, they create crawling disruptions and impact indexing and visibility on search result pages.
Affects the website’s credibility and trust
Imagine you are using a website and encountering too many broken links – will you ever trust that website? The simple answer is No. So, broken links simply affect a website’s trust and credibility and even put questions on the content quality and relevance.
Loss of authority and rankings
The poor user experience, lack of website credibility, and crawler disruption collectively cause the loss of authority and rankings in the SERPs. Broken internal and backlinks hamper user navigation and potential conversions.
How to Fix Broken Links on Your Website?
If you want to rule the internet world with higher rankings and brand visibility, it’s mandatory to find and fix broken links for good. You can also hire the best SEO company in Delhi to improve your website rankings and visibility. Here’s how to fix those broken, dead links.
Conduct link audits
The simplest way to fix broken links is to regularly conduct link audits and ensure all internal and backlinks are working properly. If you find any broken internal link, then add a new related link or remove it permanently to avoid the hassle.
Request a fix from an external site
If your backlink isn’t responding or giving a 404 Error code, then you can easily reach out to the linking website and request a quick fix. You can let them know the issue so they can fix the page to avoid further problems. Besides, you can also replace it with a different source to fix the hassle immediately.
Recreate the content of the broken link
If the link is necessary, then you can simply identify the content on the broken page and create it once again to restore the link. Replace it with other similar content to fix the broken link. Recreating or replacing the content provides users with the intended information, thus improving your website’s SEO and rankings.
Summing Up
That’s all about what are broken links. We hope this guide has helped you understand the concept and how these links affect your website’s SEO. Be mindful that fixing broken links isn’t a one-time task – but rather an ongoing process. So, it’s advised to conduct regular link audits to ensure all internal and external links and working. Address the issues as soon as possible to eliminate the chance of losing authority and rankings.
