Broken links are links on your website that point to pages that no longer exist.
Why should you care about broken links?
Because it creates a bad experience for your visitors, as it’s pretty frustrating to click on a link expecting to find something there and get a 404 error. Google knows broken links are a bad experience for users, so it doesn’t like websites that contain too many broken links.
Why should you care about broken links?
Because it creates a bad experience for your visitors, as it’s pretty frustrating to click on a link expecting to find something there and get a 404 error. Google knows broken links are a bad experience for users, so it doesn’t like websites that contain too many broken links.
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I believe Muller (or someone from Google) said Google does not penalise for 404 links. However, for your own benefit, you should put 301 Permanent Redirects to fix the broken links.
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As far as I know 404 doesn't affect your SEO. However, I prefer to put 301 redirect if it's possible. Do you see these broken links in Webmaster? What is the last crawl date?
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404 errors generated by your site do not affect rankings but that's different to having links on pages that are broken.
Having broken links, as mentioned above, causes a bad user experience and that CAN affect rankings. It shows that the site may be less well maintained and possibly out of date.
Remove the broken links or re-point them to a new resource.
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U
ukbf0001
- Original Poster
- #8
Are you talking about internal links on your site that are pointing to non existing pages or are you talking about other sites that have incorrect links pointing to your site?
On your site - 301 redirect them to a similar page, or create the page again.
If there are (quality) external sites then I would be minded to redirect the missing links to the page you want. So if the bbc have a link pointing to mydomain.com/page1 and that page doesnt exist - then either create that page or redirect to page that has similar content.
If you have a site with lots of 404 errors and a site that doesnt have any, then all things being equal - the site with the 404s will be lower down the rankings
On your site - 301 redirect them to a similar page, or create the page again.
If there are (quality) external sites then I would be minded to redirect the missing links to the page you want. So if the bbc have a link pointing to mydomain.com/page1 and that page doesnt exist - then either create that page or redirect to page that has similar content.
If you have a site with lots of 404 errors and a site that doesnt have any, then all things being equal - the site with the 404s will be lower down the rankings
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If the page or post with the bad link on is on Google search results and then somebody clicks on it, then Google will see that as a bad user experience and so your website may not rank as high. Google is emphasising on user experience more and those sites who have a better user experience will rank higher over those who give a bad user experience.
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Absolutely right Alison - I was just about to post the same, a 404 error means diddly squat if it's not indexed and not linked on a site that links to it. If the 404 page is indexed then you need to fix it asaFp , as 1. Customers will leave as soon as they see a 404 & Google will drop your page further down the SERPs
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A common 'trick' is to redirect a 404 to the home page or custom page, which if you use WordPress is dead simple ( obviously it can be done in .htaccess but that is minorly technical ) with plugins like - https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirect-404-error-page-to-homepage-or-custom-page/ ( which if you turn logging on you can see what pages are broken easily too )
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If you have broken links which are still in search engine results then you should redirect them on proper relevant pages. Yes, it can hurt search engine ranking of webpages which are connected to broken pages. So I would suggest you to redirect or resolve those pages as soon as possible.
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It's affecting to SEO because search engine ranks the website by crawling the links and if you have broken links then search engine spider/ crawler didn't crawl whole website links. And if the link already index then it creates a SERP issue because the link shows 404 or not found it also it creates a bad experience for your visitors. So if possible then repoint them and if not then remove these broken links.
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it will not hurt your ranking as much, if you find those broken backlinks just make them 301 redirection. it will fix this issue.
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I was always under the impression that any broken links are a bad idea for ranking, and visitor experience obviously.
Try Xenu, it`s free and very good.
I think it`s good advice to run Xenu every 6 to 12 months.
A quick bit of advice : is there any way of Xenu showing where on the page the broken link is ?
The best way I`ve found :
Get the Xenu report (the browser version).
If you can`t find a link that`s listed in the above check through the Xenu file list on your PC. This lists all the checked links and resources but can be very long, it certainly is for my site ! The broken links are in red and the link text is in the fifth column listed as "Title". I then put that into Google along with "aerialsandtv" to ensure results for my site are brought up. Then I click "Highlight search text" in my Google toolbar and Hey Presto, there it is !
One particularly difficult link to find was where I`d updated a dead link but accidentally I hadn`t highlighted all the link text word, I`d missed the first letter ! Thus that single letter was still pointing to the original broken link. Any reader would have almost certainly clicked on the rest of the word but any search engine would have bought it up as a dead link (plus the updated one obviously). I found it because the Xenu PC full list revealed the link text to be "f", as in just f. Then the penny dropped.....
Try Xenu, it`s free and very good.
I think it`s good advice to run Xenu every 6 to 12 months.
A quick bit of advice : is there any way of Xenu showing where on the page the broken link is ?
The best way I`ve found :
Get the Xenu report (the browser version).
If you can`t find a link that`s listed in the above check through the Xenu file list on your PC. This lists all the checked links and resources but can be very long, it certainly is for my site ! The broken links are in red and the link text is in the fifth column listed as "Title". I then put that into Google along with "aerialsandtv" to ensure results for my site are brought up. Then I click "Highlight search text" in my Google toolbar and Hey Presto, there it is !
One particularly difficult link to find was where I`d updated a dead link but accidentally I hadn`t highlighted all the link text word, I`d missed the first letter ! Thus that single letter was still pointing to the original broken link. Any reader would have almost certainly clicked on the rest of the word but any search engine would have bought it up as a dead link (plus the updated one obviously). I found it because the Xenu PC full list revealed the link text to be "f", as in just f. Then the penny dropped.....
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We use Screaming Frog to scan sites, it's an excellent tool, but there are broken link finders online such as this one that you can use for free....and it does tell you where the broken links are 
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You should be fixing those links instead of posting philosophical questions in forums. And quit worrying about SEO, you're making me nervous.
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Well you need to remove those links from the site, as the visitor/customer doesn't want to see a broken thing.
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How do you know that will see a broken thing? It's possible Google has reindexed an orphan page (because of a site map) and found a link to a non-existent page. No one but Google will ever see this.
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Broken links is a bad experience for a user as well as for search engine bot. Broken links downgrades your search engine rank. It's always recommended to fix your broken link by redirecting it to correct page or homepage.
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