Broken links can really effect the integrity of your website so it is vitally important you find them before your visitors and search engine bots do! Although it may seem like a minor point you would be mistaken because if you just leave them it makes your business look totally unreliable if you can’t even get the basics right. In this post I will tell you how to avoid the embarrassing broken links from effecting your users experience.
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First things first 404 errors
When a website user cannot find a page they are looking for they arrive at what is called an error 404 page. These pages are not often designed well but can make the experience of reaching a broken link that slightly more forgiving if it is at least pretty. Here is one I designed for MigSolv Data Centre Specialists.
Think about the company’s brand, what would represent their identity in an imaginative way?
Redirect ALL 404 error pages to the homepage
As your website grows you may notice more and more link errors appearing, its natural so don’t worry, if you have over 1000 pages and blog posts there are naturally going to be broken links (i.e. if a visitor bookmarks a particular page they liked) but it still doesn’t look great for visitors.
A way to defuse arriving at an error page is to redirect the lost soul back to the homepage so they can navigate to the desired page they were looking for. To do this you will need to follow these instructions.
1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard and on the left hand side options select Appearance > editor.
2. Navigate to the 404.php file of your live theme.
3. Replace the content with that below
Enter this code
You can download the file and replace it for your 404 file if you have access to your back end, or alternatively open it copy and paste the code into your 404.php section on the appearance editor dashboard.
Download 404 file here
How to check for broken links ?
If you are on a mac how to check for broken links
Integrity is a broken links checker for Mac OS and it is the one that I particularly use. It is straight forward and gives you heaps of broken link information.
Download it here : –
http://integrity.en.softonic.com/mac
If your are on a pc how to check for broken links
Link checker 6 is a broken links checker for PC, i’ve not actually used this one yet but the reviews on it look good.
Download it here : –
http://wummel.github.io/linkchecker/
And if you don’t want to download software
If you don’t want to download a program that is okay this Online broken link checker will help you find and correct all the links that aren’t working correctly.
Follow this link below :
http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/
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If you find any other broken link tools or you have your own tips please feel free to comment in the box below.