One feature that a lot of bloggers often overlook is to check regularly for broken links.

But is it really important?

In my eyes it is not that bad , besides we are humans and just a single character , a comma , a slash can make a link invisible.

There are some users though that are getting frustrated with broken links.And I agree , they waste their time trying to access a page that gives error.If you are a webmaster you want your website organised well , it is your web property.

Disadvantages of Broken Links

Bad UX (user experience) – minor but bad.

Some visitors may not come back on will , they might though return after a search.

You may lose new potential visitors / customers (there are people that getting annoyed as they take broken links as a sample of no respect from the site owner to them)

Bad reputation

If the number of broken links is huge it may damage your rankings in the search engines battle.

Free Online Broken Link Checker

This is a very handy tool that I use on a weekly basis.It is very easy to use and gives accurate results both for internal and external links in no time.I had just executed a full check in less than 2 minutes.You can access it here. (if the Link is not dead)

Features

• Internal & External
• Shows the exact position of the broken links in a new tab on your browser (what else should we need?)
• Reports error codes (404 , 500 ..) for the bad URLs.
• Runs on Windows , Mac OS X , Linux / UNIX , iOS
• The free version has a limit of 3000 pages but there is no limit on the number of dead hyperlinks on those pages.

How it Works

You visit the tool website , enter your url (domain) and wait for the results.

Then it will display all the problematic links , will identify their nature and there is an option to check the SRC (source).You simply click the SRC button and it opens a new tab.It will show you the exact position on your HTML underlined in red.On the top of this new tab you can find the specific URL where the link was tracked.

Then you visit your website , the exact page , search for the specific spot , you fix it and you are good to go.

I found 3 errors Today

Although minor errors , still I have to be careful.

On my Credits page , which is full of external links to partner websites , one site of those has a problem with their server.I can’t fix my link in that case , it is their problem.I can only remove it.

On one of my posts , in the comments section ,  the checker found a visitor’s gravatar with a dead link.Although I always check and remove any links from gravatars , that one slipped.

I had a link pointing to another page on my site but I forgot one single slash (/).Again in the comments area.

Update 04 August 2017

I keep on using this awesome tool often. It always delivers very fast results. It has helped me numerous times.

I hope you will find this tool useful as I do … Is this tool giving you errors?…What other tool you prefer?…I am waiting for your comments…Till next time , your online partner.

Improve UX and SEO with Internal Linking