A broken link, also known as “dead link” is a link on a web page which no longer works because of a number of reasons. Due to the presence of broken links on a website, it becomes difficult for a visitor to access the desired destination or resource. And this can affect the daily traffic on a website as the visitors start looking for information on other sources. This problem occurs if a website remains unchecked for a long time and hence it is important to update a given website on a regular basis to remove any broken link from it. In this post, we have discussed the reasons for the presence of broken links and the impact of broken links on a website.
Reasons for Broken Links on a website
- The use of improper URL for the link on a given website.
- Removal of the linked web page by the destination webpage and hence resulting in 404 error.
- Block of access to the destination website by a firewall or a software.
- Permanent removal of the destination website which leads to its non-existence.
Impact of Broken Links on SEO of a Website
Broken links don’t cause any overall damage to the SEO of a website but it impacts the online reputation of a website to a great extent. Hence, it is important to scan all the dead links on a given website using a dead link scanner in order to reduce them. The presence of a high number of broken links also degrades the quality of a website. But if a regular check is made to fix broken links then this impact can be reduced.
Poor User Experience
The reputation of a website depends on the user experience and dead links can lead to overall poor user experience by affecting the SEO of a website. It is better to remove the broken links from a website on getting notifications from Google. It is so because when a user visits a website then he would not get a good experience and will move to other websites for getting information on a given topic.
Increases Bounce Rate
Users judge the quality of a website on the basis of its usability, experience, load time and content. If users fail to access information on your website due to broken links then it would contribute to increasing the bounce rate which would eventually impact the reputation of a website.