How to find and fix broken links in WordPress

Among the most common causes of dead links are a recent website migration, a domain name change, a URL typo or a website-blocking firewall setting.

There’s also a good chance that the website you’re linking out to is offline due to some reason.

If you have converted an HTML site into a WordPress one, but have forgotten to fix the links, they won’t function either.

Last, but not least – make sure that your website hasn’t been hacked and that the dead links haven’t been caused by this.

What are the negative effects of broken links?

One of the main downsides of having a broken page concerns user experience. It’s safe to say that no one likes to be sent to the universally hated 404 error page.

You can try to lessen the harm by designing a clever-looking 404 error message, but the problem will still need to be tackled quickly and directly. And bad user experiences can give you a bad reputation.

Another negative aspect is the lost traffic. Having broken links on your website will not only disrupt the traffic flow but will also cause your website to lose many of its readers.

And bad traffic and negative user experiences can lead to website revenue losses.

And finally, your SEO will be affected.

Although in theory, the well-known 404 error page notifications are not a search engine ranking factor, they do have an effect on the overall user experience. And the latter can and will affect your search engine ranking.

Therefore, broken links can hurt your SEO efforts by marring your visitors’ on-site browsing experience.

This will result in lower search rankings, lower overall traffic volumes, and, eventually, loss of money.

How to find broken links with a plugin

Broken Link Checker

The Broken Link Checker plugin should be your first choice when you need to locate and fix broken WordPress links. Currently, it boasts the awe-inspiring 400 000+ active installations, plus more than 200 5-star reviews.

You can have the Broken Link Checker go through all the pages of your WordPress website, including all the comments, posts and custom fields. Once it finds a broken link, you’ll be alerted via e-mail or through the WP admin dashboard, depending on your preference.

You can choose to have the dead links display differently in your posts so you can easily see them. This way, search engines will stop following them.

Your links can be filtered by URL, anchor text, etc. Whenever a broken link is detected, you’ll be able to fix it directly from the Broken Link Checker’s page.

WP Broken Link Status Checker

Another good choice is the WP Broken Link Status Checker plugin.

Its strong side is finding broken links. In addition, it’s also really easy to install and set up. Plus, it offers robust site scanning configuration options.

It does have its shortcomings, though. To fix a broken link, you have to visit each page and then fix the link in question. This is okay for a website with only a few broken links.

However, if you have a site-wide broken link issue, it will be quite time-consuming to fix all the links on a page-by-page basis.

Link Checker

The Link Checker plugin should probably be your last choice when you need to identify and repair broken links on a WordPress-based website.

True, it has a free version, like most broken link-fixing WordPress plugins, but it is rather trimmed in terms of features. You can only check 500 links unless you purchase the Pro version. Remember that there are plenty of alternative free plugins that do not entail such limitations.

On the bright side, the Link Checker uses a minimal amount of server resources to run properly. It can be configured rather easily and can work simultaneously with other plugins.

How to find broken links with an online service or app

If there are no major link problems with your website, then you don’t need a plugin to check for broken links. There are several online tools that can do that for you.

Their advantage is that they don’t run on your server, so you shouldn’t worry about wasting resources even if you have a shared hosting account.

However, they pinpoint broken links without fixing them. Here are the most widely used online broken link checkers:

• W3C Link Checker
• Google Search Console
• Online Broken Link Check
• Dead Link Checker
• Check My Links (Chrome Extension)
• LinkChecker (for Windows)
• Integrity (for Mac)

The best way to fix broken links in WordPress

Once you have found all broken links on your website, it’s time to fix them.

The best way to fix a broken link is… to point it to the correct URL.

If the link is internal, you can also create a redirect. This way, you will not lose any traffic coming to the old, broken URL.

Optimizing your WordPress-based website by fixing its broken links will boost your traffic. It will also improve the overall user experience of your returning visitors.

How to identify incoming broken links

With Google Analytics, you can create a custom report to track how many referred visitors have arrived at a 404 page.

To create such a report, go to Customization and click on Custom Reports. You can choose the Import from Gallery option. Simply type ‘404’ in the search box in the upper left-hand corner of the popup window that will appear. This will present you with all the custom report templates that are currently available.

Once you have identified a link that throws up a 404 error message, you can either reach out to the referring site and ask them to use the correct URL, or you can create a redirection on your end to point visitors to the actual page they want to go to.

Checking this report on a regular basis will help you recover these otherwise lost forever visitors.