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How To Check And Fix Broken Links To Increase Your Blog SEO

Getting backlinks to our blog is a must and because it’s one of the factors that give your blog authority, we all are fighting to get some good old quality backlinks, right? But do you know that as great as backlinks can be, it can also cause more harm to your blog if not taken care properly?

backlinks

On our blog – when we make our lovely post, sometimes we link out to other blogs and/or when bloggers comment on our blogs, they leave their blog’s link. But with time, either of those links will stop functioning, why? Maybe because they change the link to that particular post or they deleted the post or the blog is no more functioning. If you don’t do regular clean up of your blog, those broken links will surely make you lose those organic traffic of yours and you might also get penalized…

How To Check And Fix Broken Links To Increase Your Blog SEO

Even if you’re not into SEO, you don’t need to be told that cleaning your blog regularly is very important for your blogs health especially when you are using commentluv plugin on your blog. So, on my today’s post I am going to show you how you can search for broken links/ dead links on your blog and fix them. So are you ready? If you are, let’s roll :).

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My Advice: If you are planning on using broken link checker plug-ins, do note that they consume heavy amount of resources. So my advice is to do it without a plug-in but if you must do it with plugin, make sure you uninstall the plugin after use.

I don’t know about you but I am using brokenlincheck.com to check and fix my broken links because it is super easy to use. So let’s move on to what we are discussing shall we!

Steps:

First go to brokenlinkcheck website and type your blog’s URL in the provided space given and click “Find broken links” [See Image Below]

broken-link-checker1

In the next step, type the security code you see on your screen to the provided box and click “Find broken links now!” [See Image Below]

broken-link-checker2

Wait till it searches all your broken links from your blog out…

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Now you can see how many broken links are in your blog. Now to remove the broken links from your blog simply follow the steps below.

Note: We are going to be removing only the bad code, bade host, 500, 522 and 404 errors

If you want to remove any of the error links mentioned above, simply click “url” showing by the right side of the broken link.

It will take you to your blog’s url where the broken link was found. Now to know the name of the commentator that used the link, simply click the “src”>>> a tab will popup bringing some codes, now check the <span class=“cluv”> section and you will see the name of the commentator and the broken commentluv link.

Now if you are receiving some good amount of comment and you can’t search for the name manually, simply press the ctrl+f key simultaneously to bring out a search box to search for the name.

If you see the name just edit it and delete the broken link.

The process was simple right? It is good to carry out this routing once a week. And do remember that if you have not been checking for broken links on your blog, someday your blog will face the consequences :).

Let’s Talk!

What other method do you use to check for broken links? Please do let us know by using the comment box below.

Do you have comments, questions or thoughts you’d love to share with us? Then please, do use the comment box and I’ll gladly reply to your question as soon as possible. Remember that your comments, questions and thoughts are highly welcome and most appreciated.

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52 thoughts on “How To Check And Fix Broken Links To Increase Your Blog SEO”

  1. Hi Babanature,

    Oh yes…I too use the BrokenLink checker just as you mentioned, but I don’t uninstal it after use. I guess if I do that I might forget to put it up again 😉

    But honestly speaking, by having it installed, I keep getting to know whenever there is a broken link and check it out immediately. However, I think I should reconsider the option and do as you suggested to save on the resources.

    Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead 🙂

    1. Hello Harleena,
      If you have been using the plugin without uninstalling it after use, you can continue, as long as it doesn’t affect you yet. But i will still advice you to use the manual process i mentioned to properly scan your blog.
      Thanks for the lovely comment and do have a great week my friend 🙂

  2. Hey thanks for this info Babanature 🙂 I have installed the Broken Link Checker plugin on my blog and it gives me a list of links then and there. But it doesn’t give out all links. Apart from that I often use brokenlinkcheck.com and this site gives me more links that are not identified by the plugin itself.

    Thanks for sharing!

    1. Hello Jane,
      I have never used a broken link plugin before because i’m keeping plugin to its minimal.
      Brokenlinkcheck.com is indeed one of the best that’s why i have recommended it :).
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  3. Hi Baba

    This is a great tool. I use it. Last night i found two broken links. On in my comment and anther in a post. I’ll have to delete the comment.

    1. Hello Abraham,
      You do not have to delete the comments, just remove the link from the comment and refresh your cache (if you’re using one) and you’re done.

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment, do have a wonderful week ahead…

  4. Hi Babanature,

    Thanks for this great post/tutorial, and I’m glad that you mentioned that cleaning plugins are heavy on a blog. I didn’t know that.

    Commentluv itself as a dead link finder/cleaner, though, what do you think about that one? My problem when using it is that I don’t really know how to get rid of the link safely. The last time I tried I actually deleted a whole post that I could never retrieve. It does feel good to get rid of all those dead links though 🙂

    Thanks for your great advice.

    1. Hello Sylviane,

      Glad you find the post interesting enough to comment :).
      I haven’t tried the commentluv link cleaner yet because i don’t want to add more plugins to my arsenal.
      I will definitely advice you to try out the brokenlinkcheck.com because it is easy to use and it searches all over your blog for possible broken/ dead links and most of all, its free :)… I created a video just to show you how to use it without deleting a comment or the entire post… here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDlrxRBbQds

      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

    1. Hello Aditya,
      Since you have seen that your blog has enough broken links, it will be wise to go in action and delete those dead links.

      Thanks for your wonderful comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  5. Nice share Baba !
    Broken links can hurt our blogs,hence we should regularly check our blogs for broken links.I use the link sleuth tool and it works really well for me. I’ve fixed a lot of broken links for my blog with this tool.Thanks for sharing the information.

    Pramod

    1. Hello Pramod,
      You are definitely right about that, it is very important to take care of our blogs broken/ dead link so it won’t suffer it letter on ;).
      I haven’t tried out sleuth tool yet but since you’re using it, it’ll indeed work…
      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your wonderful comment. Do have a great week ahead…

  6. Hi Babanature, Very helpful article! I checked with the Broken Link checker in August and it took a week for me to delete all of the broken links on my blog, mostly in comments.

    The Broken Link Checker plugin didn’t work on my blog so I didn’t think I had any but this website showed me over 400 broken links!

    I will definitely be sharing this important article, thank you!

    1. Hello Carolyn,
      Glad you find the post helpful enough to comment :)…
      It is good to always check your blog links every once a week so you won’t have to go all that stress of removing them in bulk.
      I haven’t tried the plugin yet because the manual process feels better to me 🙂

      Thanks for your wonderful comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  7. Hey Babanature,

    Nice write up here on broken links. I’ve only been use Google Webmaster Tools to get rid of the 404 errors, but I know there are some links on my site that aren’t active. I was looking for a convenient way to find them and get rid of those inactive links and looks like I made good timing. Thanks for sharing!

    1. Hello Enstine,
      To me, i’ll that this method is far better than the plugin because with this, you will get extreme result of your links :)…
      Do try it bro, i am sure that you are going to love it…

      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  8. Hi Babanature,

    To be frank I left you couple links, which now they may be dad, I left them just because I didn’t have something else to left, I apologise because those links harm your site now, I hope you remove them, links are now dad because I have to clean my domains portofolio including any plans/projects which I didn’t take care of anymore.

    Kind regards,
    I. C. Daniel

    1. Hello Daniel,
      Don’t worry about that, i always clean my blog once a week so i am sure i have deleted the links by now…
      Thanks for stopping by and do have a blessed week ahead

  9. Great article . It is really useful especially for analytics. One little issue with Xenu, it uses a lot a bandwith and CPU if the settings are set to high, and might overload/slow a server. I can also recommand “Broken link checker” is the site is under WordPress

    1. Hello Sagar,
      I don’t use broken links plugins but i do know that, any plugin that is eating up your resource is not worth keeping.
      Brokenlinkcheck is not for wordpress only. it works on all blogging platform, static html as well. It is reliable and should work for you…

      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead

    1. Hello Ammar,
      If you don’t check and fix your broken links regularly, your blog might eventually lose its organic traffic. That’s why any blogger will advice you to always clean your blog, atleast once a week…

      Well, thanks for your comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  10. Hi Babanature,

    I just read about the Broken Link Checker in another blog and was thinking of installing. But if it consume a lot of resources I will not be using it. Thanks for providing this method, although it will consume more time but at least it will not kill my blog resources.

    1. Hello Qasim,
      I’ll definitely recommend this method to the plugin method. because this method is 99% safe and secure.
      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  11. Just check and fix some of my broken links but it was with the help of broken link checker plugin, is really important to fix broken link.

    1. You tried out brokenlink checker plugin and discovered some dead links right? Now try out this method i laid down and see the deference 🙂
      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

    1. Hello Vijesh,
      Webmaster is a cool way to track down broken links, but they don’t give proper result compared to brokenlinkcheck. Try it out, i am sure that you’re going to love it.
      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  12. Hi Babanature,

    I usually use the Google Webmaster tools also like Vijesh. I tried this method, but did have to refresh my cashe. Ugh Ohh…more links to fix!

    I know I should be doing this, even install a better plug in but I always forget to do it! Thank you so much for the reminder. I really needed that!

    -Donna

    1. Hello Donna,
      I wouldn’t advice you to use a plugin on this one because plugin won’t give you accurate result as this one does…

      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  13. Hi Babanature,

    I love this program, it really shares a lot of information.

    I actually go with the second option, “Report all occurrences of each dead link”. It really helps when the broken link is within a post and you’re not sure which one it is. That second options gives you a little more detail and you can click through to that page and find the link itself. Just easier for me I’ve found.

    Thanks for sharing and I know so many people who are still confused about this so I’m sure this post will really be very helpful for them.

    Hope you’re enjoying your week.

    ~Adrienne

  14. Hi Babanature,
    thanks for such an informative post I want to know by this method we can remove broken links from my website also else there is another method to remove broken links.

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