What Are Broken Links And How It Affects On SEO?

By Faruque Ahamed Mollick

Broken Links are those hyperlinks on a website which are linked to web page that are not exist or removed. in most of the time link pages shows 404 errors or no site exist.

Reasons that can encounter broken links on a website

Here are some of the reasons that a hyperlink may consider as broken link:

  • The destination URL is removed. It may found a 404 error page.
  • Destination URL does not exist.
  • The destination website is removed.
  • The destination website permanently moved or no longer exists
  • The URL may have a firewall that does not allow to access the site or page.
  • Improper URL entered for the hyperlink.

There are two types of broken links can be found on a website. One is internal broken link and the other one is external broken link. Internal broken links are links of your own website that are not exists or may be removed (404 error page). External broken links are links from external websites that are no longer available or may be 404 error page (not exist).

How Broken Links can affects on SEO?

Broken links are really bad as it creates bad impression to the visitors of a site when they found nothing or 404 error after clicking a link on a web page of that website. Search engines like Google take these broken links into account on a site as the usability of that website which become a ranking factor on Google. So obviously it can affects on a site that contain broken links.

Broken links always negatively impact on SEO of a website. If your site contain too many broken links then the ranking of your site on search engines will not be so good. The more broken links found on your site by search engine the worse your site will be ranked on Google. When the Google bot crawl a website, it also check the links available on that site and if the links of that pages encountered as broken links then it will be bad for your site.

Obviously, broken links are really so harmful not only for creating bad user experience but also for worse rank on Google. So broken links affects on both human and bots.

As it affects negatively on SEO so you will lost your search traffic if your site contain too many broken links. Search traffic are so important for a website. So obviously broken links on a site will also affects on site revenue.

So you have understand after reading the above content of this article how broken links can harm your site and how it can negatively affects on a site’s SEO.

In the end I want to say that as broken links are so harmful for your site and affects on SEO also, so you must have to find these types of links on your site and you should fix it as soon as possible. There are lots of online tools available which you can use to find broken links on your site. If you are running your site on WordPress then there are some plugins available which can find broken links easily. Also you can find broken links on your site easily using Google Webmaster Tools or Search Console .

I am soon Going to write an article which tell you how to find and fix broken links in details.

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