I'm excited to share this series with you, called "101 Blogging Tips". In the series there will be 101 blogging tips that you can begin applying to your blog today! Don't wait, get started now!
Tip #60: Find and Fix Broken Links
This happens to all of us! Sometimes we delete pages or change the link URL of a post / page we previously worked on. However, if any of your other pages, sidebar, or past posts (not to mention other external links out there) link to that post or page, visits will get the 404 Not Found error message (or similar) when clicking a broken link – a link that no longer is working.
Great news is that there are free tools available for you to use to help you quickly identify broken links in your site and some even tell you what other sites or pages on your own site are linking to those non-existent URLs! So you either have to republish the link (page) or you have to update the sites and pages that link to the old link, and replace with a new link.
Yes, it's a process, and manual and takes time, but recommended to be done – just good blogging and website design practice.
I would first suggest using Google Webmaster Tools! It's free and if you already use YouTube, Blogger, Analytics, Feedburner, then you already have a Google Account. You just have to add your site to Google Webmaster Tools. Click here on Getting Started with Google Webmaster Tools!
- Once logged in and viewing your site inside Google Webmaster Tools.
- Click Crawl Errors. In my example it found 3.
- I clicked on that area, 3 Found, and then it displayed the 3 broken links displayed in the above snapshot.
- I then clicked on AprilClassKit.html and you can see the full path.
- Then I clicked on LinkedFrom and I can see my other blog, http://www.BlogsByHeather.com referenced it in some of my blogging tutorials when showing how to add a Class Kit or sale item to your blog's sidebar.
- So it looks like I have some fixing to do!
So you should run these types of tests on your site and see if you have any broken links, and then do your best to fix them.
An alternate option to try is LinkTiger. You enter your site address and it will email you a report!
Happy Holidays!!!!