5 Ways to Fix Broken Links

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Having broken links on your site is bad news for both your human visitors and your SEO , so learning how to fix broken links is an important part of running a successful site.

In this article, we'll go in-depth on why broken links are something you should look for and fix. Then, we'll show you five different methods you can use to find and fix broken links without slowing down your site.

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Broken Links Are Bad for SEO and User Experience
Broken links are bad for your site for several reasons.

First of all, there is the effect it has on your human visitors. If someone clicks on a link, they do so because they are interested in the content that was offered to them when they shared this link. Does that make sense?

So, by sending them a broken link instead of the content you promised them, you're creating a frustrating experience for your visitors , and for that reason alone, it's a good incentive to find these broken links on your site.

Broken links are not only bad for humans, they are also bad for robots. Specifically, the crawler bots used by search engines like Google .

First, broken links are a waste of time and resources for Google crawlers. Every 404 page that Googlebots find as a result of a broken link is a live page that Google could have shared.

Beyond this, broken links are also a waste of link equity. For example, if you have a broken internal link from one post to another, you won’t be getting the SEO benefit of that internal link, which is a huge negative for your SEO efforts.

5 Ways to Fix Broken Links
Ok, so broken links are bad for your site. But now it’s time to answer this important question – How to fix these broken links?

In the following sections, we will cover five ways to fix broken links in WordPress. You can click on the links below to jump straight to the specific section or read all five methods:

Web-Based SEO Audit Tool
Google Search Console
Computer Software
Online Broken Link Checker Tool
WordPress Broken Link Checker Plugin – we do not recommend this method, but we will still include it in this article to add some caveats
1. Web-Based SEO Audit Tool
The first method we recommend to find broken links and fix them is to use a web-based SEO audit tool. Two of the most popular ones are Ahrefs and SEMrush . Both include pretty powerful online audit china phone number data tools that will automatically scan your sites for errors.

Actually, Ahrefs will help you find several places where you might see broken links.

Option 1 – Find Broken Links with Ahrefs’ Audit Tool
The first way to find broken links in Ahrefs is to use their amazing site audit tool . Simply start a new project, enter your site address, and let it scan your site. Depending on the size of your site, this could take around 20 minutes or so.

Remember, if you are a Kinsta client, AhrefsBot user agent requests are excluded from your billable visits.

Ahrefs Site Audit Tool
Ahrefs Site Audit Tool
After the scan is complete, click on the reports section and you will find a list of all 404 errors on your site. Then, you will be able to see all the broken links on your site and the internal pages where they appear. Then, you should update the broken links with the correct ones.