How To Find Broken Links on your Web Site

Checking for broken links is very important if you are migrating your site from one technology to another. For example Joomla on WordPress, Magento on Joomla, etc.

I learned my lesson, and here's how I found and fixed my broken links, which might help you too. I have listed several ways to find broken links, so you can choose the one that is comfortable for you.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

SEO Spider is a powerful offline tool that will also help you find a broken link. This is not an online tool, so you must download the Screaming Frog SEO Spider and install it on your computer.

After installation, follow the procedure below to check for broken links.

• Open Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Enter the website URL and click the Get Started button. For a large site, this may take several minutes.
• After scanning, you will see all internal links with an HTTP response code. You are interested in the 404 status code, so an easy way to search is to sort by the Status Code column.
• As you can see, I found one 404 links that I need to fix. But currently, I don't know which post this link is in, so I'll click on Inlinks at the bottom to find out the original post (From Column).

Now I know in which post the link was broken. Isn't it simple?

Ahrefs

Tired of broken links? Worry no more and try Ahrefs Broken Link Checker! With it, you can check all outgoing and incoming links within seconds.

All you have to do is enter a URL or domain of your website and instantly check the number of broken links. You can even filter and sort the list to prioritize the fix process before it can affect the site's SEO. 

This tool also allows you to view dead pages and restore them to suitable options to improve your rankings. Plan to check for broken links monthly, weekly, or even daily to ensure the stability of the links on your site.

You can also compare different test results to track the improvements and performance of this tool. If you want to save time, you can outsource these tasks to a freelancer and share CSV reports generated in seconds.

Some freelancers on Fiverr can explore broken links for you and also conduct outreach.

SEMrush

SEMrush is an all-in-one cloud-based digital marketing software that offers a lot of things, including broken links. Broken links are available in the Site Audit section.

Sitechecker

Sitechecker broken link checker is a functional tool that helps you identify broken links. You can use this tool to check URLs and get a report showing all broken links. You can also eliminate them.

Using their broken link scanner to check the health and SEO of your site is as easy as copying and pasting your site's URL.

A free online broken link checker will help you with this:

• Carrying out scanning of 150 web pages
• Reporting error codes for any broken URLs - including 404 and 502 and 301 redirect errors
• Troubleshoot end-user usability issues to remove problematic redirects
• Securing high-value links for your site with broken link management features
• Providing full functionality without creating an account or downloading any software

DeadLinkChecker

DeadLinkChecker is an online tool that can check an entire site or a single page. If you don't want to use a standalone tool, then this would be the best alternative.

Broken Link Checker

Another great online broken link checker tool that will crawl your site and give you detailed information about broken links.

Dr. Link Check

Dr. Link Check will scan your site for 1,000 links for free and at the end give you a summary of internal, external, and broken links. If you have less than 1000 links, then it's worth a try.

Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker is an efficient Chrome extension that can quickly crawl your web page or entire site with lots of links. In addition, it provides a link report within minutes. The tool generates reports directly without requiring installation or additional program files.

The tool allows you to distinguish between broken and working links so you can easily fix them. It can also analyze the presence of external links; thus, if your site has an external link with a 404 error, you can see it in the report and quickly fix the situation.

Broken Link Test

Geekflare offers the Broken Link Test, which allows you to check for broken links on your site before it affects SEO. The tool can view up to 3000 links.

To get started, simply enter your webpage's URL and click the "Check Links" button to determine if it contains internal or external broken links. Get a list containing broken links and edit them piece by piece. If you need to programmatically test it, you can also use the Geekflare API.

SEOptimer

SEOptimer is a tool that can check your site to find any issues that could be flagged as penalties by the search engine. The software comes with a 14-day trial that can be used to run checks on

• Title and meta titles
• Keyword Consistency
• Backlinks
• Rendering for mobile devices and tablets

The program is highly customizable and can create professional yet simple PDF reports in nine different languages.

Two paid versions are available - $29 per month and $59 per month. Both versions come with additional features.

Conclusion

I hope the tools above will help you find broken links on your site so you can take the necessary steps to fix them.

Alternatively, if you need to check links programmatically, you can try the Geekflare Broken Link API, which scans up to 300 pages of your sites for broken links. You can quickly make API calls and get a JSON response.

After that, you can convert the JSON response to Excel for fast reporting and troubleshooting.