Aug 19th 2022

How to Find and Fix Broken Links and 404 Errors

Picture this: You just moved to a new home, and you’re looking for a new bed. You perform an internet search and find four local businesses, so you go to their websites to find more about their inventory. You click on the first site, and then on the link for the “bedroom sets” category, and instead of getting the results you were promised, all you get is a “sorry, page not found” message. You may feel disappointed for a short period of time, but you then click on the next local business and buy your bedroom set from them.

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Now imagine this happening to people who visit your site: your prospective customers. What do you think they’ll do? We’ll tell you: they’ll most likely do the same thing you did in the example above. They’ll hit the back button and click on the next site that meets their needs, which means you’ve just lost a potential client. How many do you face losing?

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A dead or broken link is a link that points to nowhere. So, what causes broken links? The most common causes are:

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• Making a typo when you created the link
• Deleting an image, video, file or an entire web page
• Renaming or moving a page and forgetting to update your internal links
• Changing domain names and moving the site to a new URL

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Now that you know what broken links are and the common causes, here are three ways to avoid and fix broken links and 404 pages:

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• Update rather than remove: Rather than removing pages try to update or refresh the content. This will help prevent avoidable unwanted 404 pages that may result from deleting content that other pages are linking to. In addition, it will ensure that the most valuable and up to date content is available to your customers.
• 301 redirect visitors to a new page: If the content still exists on your site, but has simply changed location, or there has been an update to your URL structure, then redirect that URL to the new page using a 301 redirect. That way, if anyone clicks onto the deleted page, they won’t see an error page, they will be automatically taken to the new page.
• Contact the webmaster and ask for an updated link: If the 404 error is occurring because an external site is using an incorrect URL to link to you, you may be able to resolve the issue by reaching out and requesting an update from the author or webmaster.

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Not sure if you have broken links? If you have a small site, you may be able to try using the “Broken Link Checker” chrome extension. This tool will help you discover both internal (links to your own site) and external (links to other sites) broken links. However, this can be tedious if your site is extensive. But don’t fret, we can help!

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At TechPeer, we know that your website needs to provide a great visitor experience, directing people to content of great value. No matter how much time and resources you’ve invested into getting potential customers to your site, if what they find is broken, all of your efforts can be wasted. You can’t ignore broken links, considering the serious damage they can do to your site, your reputation, and your revenue. The good news is there are plenty of tools out there we can use to help identify broken links and optimize your site. Contact us today for more details.