Broken Links

Broken Link (404) Error Message

What are broken links and how do they occur?

“Broken links” occur when a link on a website sends people to resources that no longer exist.

These resources can include websites, documents, images and/or videos, located on the same website (or internal network) or externally on a different website.

There are two reasons why broken links exist:

  1. For internal backlinks, the link URL was either entered incorrectly or an internal page has been moved or removed.
  2. For external backlinks, the resource being linked to has either moved to another location online or was deleted – referred to as “link rot”.

A person will receive an error message when they experience a broken link, which is referred to as a “404 error” or just a “404”.

404 error
Several examples of broken link (404) error messages.

Why are broken links relevant to SEO efforts

There are technical and experiential benefits gained when you fix broken links on your website.

Technically speaking, broken links make crawling and indexing a website more difficult for search engine crawlers.

Google and others search engines frown upon this because broken links  lead to poor user experiences for site visitors and can negatively impacts a potential customer’s  perception of your brand.

This is why you need to address every broken link on your site by fixing it and then requesting Google to re-crawl your site.

How does Organix Digital address broken links?

Organix Digital recognizes the damage that broken links can do to a website’s SEO.

Repairing broken links is one of the first steps we take in optimizing your site and is included on all packages. This scope of work includes replacing or removing all broken links (internal and external).

Once completed and verified, we will then request search engines to re-crawl your site.

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