What are the common causes and types of broken links and redirects?

1 What are broken links?

Broken links are links that lead to non-existent or inaccessible pages, either on your own website or on external sites. They can result in error messages, such as 404 (not found) or 500 (internal server error), or blank pages. Broken links can frustrate your visitors, damage your reputation, and reduce your traffic and conversions.

2 What are redirects?

Redirects are instructions that tell your browser to go to a different URL than the one you entered or clicked on. They can be useful for various purposes, such as updating your site structure, changing your domain name, or fixing broken links. However, redirects can also cause problems, such as slow loading speed, duplicate content, or redirect loops.

3 What causes broken links and redirects?

Broken links and redirects can have a variety of causes, including deleting or renaming pages without updating the links to them, migrating your site to a new platform or domain without proper redirection, and typing errors or misspellings in the link URL or anchor text. Additionally, linking to external sites that have changed or removed their content, using outdated plugins, themes, or code that interfere with your links or redirects, and hacking or malware attacks that alter or delete your links or redirects can all lead to broken links and redirects.

4 How to identify broken links and redirects?

Identifying broken links and redirects is the first step to fixing them. You can use analytics and reports to search for errors, bounce rate, and page views. Additionally, online tools or plugins such as Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, or Broken Link Checker can scan your site for broken links and redirects. Moreover, you can test your links manually by clicking on them and observing the results. Finally, asking your visitors or customers for feedback or complaints about your site's functionality can help you identify any issues.

5 How to fix broken links and redirects?

Once you have identified broken links and redirects on your site, you need to take action to fix them. Depending on the cause and type of issue, you can update or edit the link URL or anchor text, create or restore missing or deleted pages, set up proper redirects with 301 (permanent) or 302 (temporary) codes, remove or replace links that point to external sites that no longer exist or have changed their content, update or remove plugins, themes, or code that cause conflicts or errors with your links or redirects, and secure your site from hacking or malware attacks that compromise your links or redirects.

6 How to prevent broken links and redirects?

To avoid broken links and redirects, it is essential to follow best practices such as planning and organizing your site structure and navigation before creating or changing your pages, using consistent and descriptive naming conventions for your pages and URLs, testing your links regularly, linking to reliable external sites, using quality plugins, themes, and code that support your site's functionality and security, and monitoring your site's performance and health. Taking these steps will help you prevent broken links and redirects from occurring in the first place.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?