Broken links hurt SEO, and one should consider this as important as other SEO factors. A few years back, I migrated Geekflare from Joomla to WordPress and somehow missed checking broken links until I found many 404 requests in Google Analytics. This was expected as WordPress changed the URL structure compared to Joomla, but I am a human being, so I made a mistake in not checking. Checking broken links is very crucial if you are migrating your website from one technology to another. Ex: Joomla to WordPress, Magento to Joomla, etc. So I learned my lesson, and here is how I found and fixed my broken links, which may help you too. I have listed multiple ways to find broken links so you can choose whatever is easy for you.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
SEO Spider is a powerful offline tool, which also helps you find a broken link. It’s not an online tool, so you must download Screaming Frog SEO Spider and install it on your computer. Once installed, follow this procedure to find broken links.
Open Screaming Frog SEO SpiderEnter the website URL and click on Start. It may take a few minutes for a large website.Once scanned, you will see all the internal links with the HTTP response code. You are interested in the 404-status code, so an easy way to find is by sorting the “Status Code” column.As you can see, I found one 404, which I got to fix it. But at this time, I don’t know which post is having this link, so I will click on Inlinks at the bottom to find out the source post (From Column).
Now, I know which post has broken a link. Isn’t it easy?
Ahrefs
Are you fed up with broken links? Worry no more and try the broken link checker by Ahrefs! It helps you check all the outbound and inbound links within seconds. All you need to do is enter your website URL or domain and check the number of broken links instantly. You can even filter and sort the list for prioritizing the fixing process before it could impact the site SEO. This tool also lets you view dead pages and reinstate them to suitable options to get better with your rankings. Schedule broken link checking monthly, weekly, or even daily to ensure steady website links. You can also compare different checking results to track the improvements and efficiency of this tool. If you want to save time, you can outsource the tasks to a freelancer and share CSV reports generated in seconds. Some freelancers on Fiverr can research the broken links for you and do outreach as well.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one digital marketing cloud-based software that offers many things, including broken links. Broken links are available under the site audits.
Sitechecker
Sitechecker broken link checker is a functional tool that helps to identify broken links. You can use this tool to check URLs and get a report identifying all the dead links. You will also be able to address and fix them. It’s as easy to use their broken link scanner to check the health and SEO of your website as copy and paste your website’s URL. Free online broken link checker helps you by:
Conducting a scan of 150 web pagesReporting error codes for any broken URLs —including 404 and 502 errors and 301 redirectsFixing end-user usability issues to remove problematic redirectsProviding high-value links for your website through broken link outreach featuresOffering full functionality without creating an account or downloading any software
Dead Link Checker
DeadLinkChecker is an online tool that has an option to check the whole website or a single page. If you were not willing to use the offline tool, then this would be the best alternative.
Broken Link Checker
Another excellent online broken link checker tool to scan your website and give you dead links details.
Dr. Link Check
Dr. Link Check scan your website for 1000 links in free, and in the end, it gives you a summary of internal, external & broken links. If you had less than 1000 links, then this would be worth trying.
Chrome Extension
Broken Link Checker is an efficient chrome extension that can quickly scan your web page or the whole website with a lot of links available. Further, it provides the link report within minutes. The tool generates the reports directly without requiring you to install and extra program files. The tool lets you differentiate between broken and functioning links so you can fix them easily. It can also analyze the availability of external links; hence, if your site has an external link having error 404, you can see it in the report and execute a quick fix.
Broken Link Test
Geekflare offers a Broken link Test to allow you to check broken links on your website before it could affect your SEO. The tool is capable of crawling up to 3000 links. To get started, just enter your web page URL and hit on “Test Links” to find whether it contains any internal or external broken links. Fetch the list containing broken links and edit them piece by piece. If you need to test it programmatically, you can also leverage Geekflare API.
SEOptimer
SEOptimer is a tool that can check your website in order to find any problems which might be flagged by a search engine as a penalty charge. The software comes with a 14-day trial version which can be used to carry out checks on
Title and meta headersKeyword consistencyBacklinksMobile and tablet rendering
The software is customizable to look as the user desires and is capable of producing a professional yet simple worded PDF report in nine different languages. Two paid versions are available at $29 per month and $59 per month. Both come with extra features.
Conclusion
I hope the above tools should be able to help you in finding broken links on your website so you can take the necessary action to fix them. Alternatively, if you need to check the links programmatically, you may try Geekflare Broken Link API which crawls up to 300 pages of your websites to scan for the broken links. You can quickly make API calls and get the response in JSON format. Afterward, you can convert the JSON response to Excel for quick reporting and troubleshooting.
