Check for broken links: recommendations and tips

During the existence of the site, sooner or later, such a problem as broken links will necessarily appear on it. They lead to a page, image, file, or other site that does not already exist. What is their danger, how to check them, how often do they do it? Read about this in our article.

Reasons for education

On sites, broken links appear for various reasons.

The main thing is a complete deletion of a file or page from the network or from your site. If the page has lost relevance or the image has been deleted from the database, the link to it will become invalid.

Slightly less often the address itself changes, for example, because of the renaming of the material or site. The reference in this case too can cease to operate.

Well and the most banal reason is a usual error at a writing url. This happens if the person prescribes them manually or does not completely copy them. Therefore, it is very important to check all links immediately after adding them.

Why you need to control this

The danger of broken links is that, having not received the necessary information, the visitor will simply leave the site. As a result, the behavioral factor will worsen, as well as the position of the site in the search engines. In general, the promotion of the project is very difficult. Therefore, checking for broken links is an important part of the site administration work.

Manual removal

Work with broken links can be without software. If the site you have is small, then you will just have to go through the pages and check all the hyperlinks for their efficiency. If you are careful and do not miss any, then this method will be the most reliable. It will allow you to determine exactly whether links are available to ordinary users.

But this method has a significant drawback. It can take several hours, and on a large project it can not be applied at all, as you are guaranteed to skip any links or even whole sections. Therefore, it is better to use hardware.

Online services

If you do not want to install anything on your computer, you can use the service of checking broken links on the Internet. There are many such sites, it is enough to indicate the address of your project, so that the service will give you all the broken links and their location. These services include Broken Link Checker, Usabilla, Free Link Checker and others. Checking the broken links online is quite convenient. Services are easy to use, but their functionality is often severely limited.

Check for broken links on sites on the platform of Wordpress

If you own a site running WordPress, then you will not be able to control broken links. Checking the site on Wordpress on broken links can be done with the help of plug-ins installed on the resource. For example, such a plugin is Broken Link Checker.

To work with it you should go to the path "Options - Check links - Advanced". The "Check all pages" option will be available in the window that appears. If you click on it, the plug-in will start automatically, you will only have to wait for the operation to complete. Then in the General window there will be broken links, you need only analyze them and eliminate them.

Most of these plug-ins allow not only to quickly search, but also immediately replace broken links, and, if necessary, delete them. The only drawback of such services is that they require a lot of resources, because of what the site can significantly slow down. Therefore, they should be used with caution.

Check with Yandex and Google

If you use Yandex.Webmaster, you will be able to find broken links using the tools of this service. You can do this in the menu "Indexing a site", in the "Excluded pages" section, in the item "HTTP status: Resource not found (404)". All invalid links with this error will appear in the window. In the same place it will be shown on which pages they are placed. Directly from the webmaster you can follow the links and fix them.

The same can be done in the Google Webmaster in the "Status / Scan Errors" section.

Unfortunately, these services do not find all the broken links, they are not very convenient to work with.

Programs on the computer for verification

Errors can be checked not only online, but also with the help of special programs. The most popular program for checking broken links is Xenu Link Sleuth. It is abandoned by developers and has not been updated for a long time, but it's doing its job well.

Instructions for using the Xenu program

If you need to check the site for broken links, Xenu will do it very well.

Somehow, there is no need to customize the program. Simply open the File menu and select Check Url, or simply click on the clean sheet icon on the toolbar. In the opened window it is necessary to insert the link to the main page of your site.

All site URLs will be sorted. Above the list there will be broken links, highlighted in red, and from below - working, marked in green. Sometimes the red color marks the links leading to the service pages. You can ignore them. And the rest will need to work separately.

To get the most complete information about a broken link, you need to right-click on it and select the Url properties option. The opened window will show the title of the link, as well as the pages on which it is used.

If you are using Xenu to check for broken links, then bear in mind that it can sometimes be wrong. If the program does not wait for a response from the url, it will mark it as being beaten with the status no connection. Such links are sorted at the very top when sorting, they will need to be checked manually.

To delete and change the found broken links it is necessary to hands. There are no services or programs for such purposes, especially since it is simply impossible - links need to be entered by yourself.

What's nice, the Xenu program is distributed free of charge. However, in case of errors, there will be no one to turn to.

Using Linkoskop

Linkoscop allows you to evaluate internal linking. It performs many functions, including checking where all links on the site lead, that is, doing what we need. This program is paid, costs 450 rubles for a license for five years. Within three days you can use it for free. Some people note that Linkoscop copes with searching for broken links worse than Xenu. Often she does not find them at all or determines only a small amount.

Which control method should I choose

Each of the above methods has its own advantages and disadvantages, so you need to apply them in different cases.

The manual way will suit the owners of small sites with a small number of pages. The method is quite reliable and allows 100% detection of broken links, but it requires a lot of hard work.

Online check is a convenient and compact version that does not take up space on the computer and is suitable for checking the site anywhere, not just on your home PC.

Checking the site for broken links by programs is less mobile, but very reliable way. In addition, the programs have some additional features that help to better customize the site.

Checking plug-ins is the most convenient way for those who have sites on CMS Wordpress.

How often you need to monitor

If you regularly update information on the site and constantly add new links, you should always check them. It is also very important to monitor broken links if your site has existed for a long time. Some of them, especially external ones, may become obsolete.

It is necessary to check the broken links about once a month. More often you do not need to do this, but with rarer checks, you can lose a significant portion of the project visitors. By the way, to save resources on the site on Wordpresse, you can put the Broken Link Checker plug-in once in 30 days, only for the time of verification. If the plug-in will stand permanently, then it will unnecessarily load the site.

Checking broken links 1C

Broken links can occur not only on sites, but also in the 1C system. If the information base is damaged, then some objects may be lost, then the references to them get the form