Broken links are something which is not good for search engine and also for bots. Today, I will be sharing some free broken link checker tools which will help you to detect 404 and dead links on your blog. Personally, I prefer Xeny link sleuth for my sites. <Link>. Though, I’m sure many of us here are wondering why we need to use these dead link checker websites. I will explain this after a break.
Why we need Broken link checker tools:
Broken links are those links which gives 404 status code. Usually, when a webmaster decides to change permalink and also removes the page it gives 404 status code. Such links are call as broken links and they are not useful for search engine and also for readers. Too many broken links are not treated as sign of quality site, so we should make sure to fix such links and point them to right URL.
These free online link checker tools will check your sites for any broken links. These means, it could be internal broken link or could be external broken links. Specially, if you have huge blog, your old posts may have too many dead links, by adding working and updated URL’s, you will be making them worth a read. Search engines bots hates broken links, which can result in low ranks in search engines and less traffic to your blog. From a search engine perspective Broken links are treated as dead end.
For WordPress bloggers, we have Broken link checker WordPress plugin, which is very useful and effective. Though, for static sites and for BlogSpot, we don’t have any such plugin, so we will look into some online solutions.
If visitors are landing on broken links of your blogs, there are chances that they won’t return back to your site. No one has time to waste time on broken links. You can find out broken links with lots of free site checker tools available online. Once you detected broken links of your blog, you can manage those broken links with redirection plugin.
Credit : Openphoto
Useful free Broken link checker scripts:
Free link Checker
Free link checker is helpful in checking broken internal and external links within your blog. You can also check the validity of your links on any web page on internet. With URL links it checks image links also.
BLC:
Broken Link checker is another online service. IT provides neat and clean results which are easy to understand and gives a clear view of your broken links. I found it fast in comparison with Free Link Checker. <Link>
W3C Link Checker
W3C Link Checker is provides you options while checking broken links of your blog such as show only summary, hide redirects, checking linked documents , sending referrer header etc. In results, it provides the status of link and list the issues occurred while checking broken links.
Link Tiger
Link tiger allows you to check 100 links every week for free. The best part I like about Link Tiger is that as soon as it discover any broken links , it sends an email alert to you. Thus you will be first one to know, if you have any broken links in your blog.
Dead Link Checker
Dead link checker is very simple and fast to use. It gives you status an description of your broken links and thus makes easy to detect broken links of your blog.
Broken links gives an unprofessional image to visitors about you and your blog. If you are ignoring your blog’s broken link then I would suggest keeping a check on broken links of your blogs with the above mentioned tools. It doesn’t take much time and is very easy to check.
Do you think that detecting broken links is a vital part of SEO? If yes , then what you do to check broken links of your blog?
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Broken Links are enemies of a blog, thanks for these options
Agree with you Shekhar, all blogger must keep on checking for broken links , it’s an important factor for blogging success.
Broken links should be taken care of very well. It can damage the blogs reputation easily.
Broken Links are enemies of a blog, thanks for these options!
Thanks for sharing these links Ruchi
Glad you like it Simran
Thanks for sharing the sites friend. Now it has become easy to find broken links in my site.
Try it out Bimal and don’t forget to share your feedbacks.
wow…its nice recommendation
thank u…^^
Glad you found it useful Beben.
mathematically, broken links = 1/SEO Factor
Mathematics seems to be your fav subject Gagan
Nice one Gagan.
I find W3C broken link checker to be the most effective of them all.
W3C is most popular of all , even I prefer to use it.
I use Broken Link Checker for one of my blog, it was awesome.
Yeah Pavan, Broken link checker is very popular.
There is one more cool & free checking service: http://www.BrokenLinkCheck.com/ Most of available tools can list broken links more or less fine but are lacking ability to point where are exactly in HTML a partucular dead link sits at. The tool I mentioned does it!
Hey there, Nice article, Do you know of a website that allows you to check mass links to see if they are broken.
Great share!
Thanks again. Need to do a lot of searching for broken links on my blog.
I am sure i will found lots of them.
Thanks for the site recommendation. I just ran a test with Free link Checker and Broken Link Checker with no broken link. W3C reported some javascript error so i think W3C is a more comprehensive tool. Dead Link Checker does not work for me, it always check but no result is shown.