Difference between revisions of "Broken Links Can Weaken Your Business"

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What on earth are broken links?

Broken links are links that fail to direct a user to a requested site and often result in an error message. Broken links can cost you business and lost revenue by rendering your site, your products, and your services invisible to viewers.

We've all been there before -- looking for something specific in a search engine index. Yet, when we click on a promising link, it delivers an error message instead of the page we'd hoped to view. Sadly, a broken link on a website is the surest way to lose visitors and potential customers. While you can't prevent people from linking to your site incorrectly, you can help people find your site effectively, and keep them engaged once they arrive on your site.

First things, first -- what can cause a broken link?

~ Someone has bookmarked a page that has moved or been deleted

~ You rename a page and forget change all your internal links

~ Another site links to an old or removed page on your site

~ A search engine ranks a deleted page that is still in the index

~ Someone links to one of your pages but types the URL incorrectly

Broken links on your site and how to fix them

When links are broken within your own site, they are easy to correct. When they are external, or from an incoming site, your options for fixing them are a bit more limited.

Now, for the solutions!

The following four steps will help you stop losing visitors and potential revenue due to broken links.

1) Create a custom 404-error page. This is a catch-all solution that every site should employ. If you don't have a custom 404-error page then you must make one, asap!

To craft a custom 404-error page, simply pick a page from your site, gut the contents and replace it with your personal error message and links. Save the file in your root directory and name it something easy like 404-redirect.htm. A good 404-error page will look and feel just like any other page on your site. The only difference is the error page tells your visitor, "this page is gone, missing, or moved."

The example on the right is very clear. It tells the visitor there's a problem and offers two fixes to try. These include checking the spelling of the URL and pressing the "back button" to load the page again. While these options might not fix the problem, they may help to keep the user engaged on your site or keep them from leaving your site out of frustration.

The image on the right is a poor example of an error message. It doesn't provide enough information to keep the user engaged or to encourage them to try again. More importantly, it doesn't offer the user a way to return to the original site for further options. This type of error message will lose you customers and protential business.

2) Edit your .htaccess file with this line of code: ErrorDocument 404 /404-redirect.html.

Be sure to use absolute paths for every link and image. This ensures if someone hits a broken link in a sub-directory -- www.pretendsite.com/directory/directory.html -- you won't end up with broken links on the page that supposedly corrects your original broken link problem.

Be sure to create a custom page for each broken link. Do not rely on the above code to redirect people to your home page. This can be confusing and frustrating if someone tries to link to a different page on your site.

3) Implement 301 redirect if you are moving or renaming pages on your website. A redirect is the surefire way to prevent visitors from trying to visit deleted or moved pages. By implementing the redirect, visitors and search engines are automatically transferred from the old page to its new location. The transition is seamless and the visitor will never know the link is broken.

There are a number of ways to implement redirects, but the best way is with a 301 .htaccess file. Simply add the following code to the .htaccess file, save it, upload it, and you should see the redirect -- swing into action. Redirect permanent /page.htm http://www.fakesite.com/page.htm.

4) Use Google Webmaster Tools to learn when another site has linked to your site incorrectly. Googlebots can discover a broken link to your site when crawling other websites.