Invalid links on your WordPress site are bad news for both your human visitors and your site’s SEO, so learning how to fix broken links in WordPress is an important part of running a successful WordPress site.
in this article, we will explain in depth why broken links are worth finding and correcting. Then we’ll show you six different ways to find and fix invalid links in WordPress without slowing down your site.
broken links are bad for SEO and user experience
for several different reasons, broken links are bad for your WordPress site. First of all,
has an impact on your visitors. If someone clicks on a link, they do so because they are interested in what they are told the link will take them to. That makes sense, right?
, by sending them to broken links instead of the content you promised them, you are creating a frustrating experience for visitors, which in itself is a good motivation to find and fix broken links on your site.
, however, breaking the state of the link is not only bad for humans, but also bad for robots. Specifically, Google and other search engines use crawler robots.
first of all, links in an invalid state will waste your opportunity to grab content in Google. Every 404 page that Googlebot encounters due to link corruption is a real-time page that Google can crawl.
in addition, broken links are also a waste of linked assets. For example, if you break the internal link from one blog post to another, you cannot gain the SEO advantage from that internal link, which is bad for your SEO work.
five ways to repair broken links in WordPress
is good, so broken links are bad for your WordPress site. Now is the time to answer the important question-how do you fix links to invalid states in WordPress?
in the next section, we will show you five ways to fix broken links in WordPress. You can click the following to jump directly to a specific section or read through all five methods:
- web-based SEO detection tool
- based on spider statistical analysis plug-in
- Google search console
- desktop software
- online broken link check tool
- The WordPress plug-in Broken Link Checker- we do not recommend this approach, but we will still include some disclaimers in the article,
1. Web-based SEO inspection tool
We recommend that the first way to find and repair failed state links in WordPress is to use the Web-based SEO detection tool. The two most popular are Ahrefs and SEMrush. They all include very powerful site detection tools where you can automatically scan your WordPress site for errors.
Ahrefs actually has several different places to find links in a broken state.
Option 1-use the Ahrefs detection tool to find invalid links
‘s first way to find invalid links in Ahrefs is to use their amazing site detection tool (which is a paid service). Just set up a new project, enter your WordPress site address, and have it scan your site. Depending on the size of your website, this may take about 20 minutes.
remember that if you are a user of the spider statistical analysis plug-in, make sure thatAhrefsBotis not added to the blocking list. After the
Ahrefs site Detection tool
scan is complete, click on the reports section and you will find a list of all 404 errors on your WordPress website. You can then view all the broken links on your site and the internal pages on which they appear. You should then update the invalid link with the correct link. Link corruption
in
Ahrefs site detection tool
Option 2-use Ahrefs site Explorer to find broken links
you can also use Ahrefs site Explorer (which is also a paid service) to find broken links. Simply put your WordPress site URL in Ahrefs site Explorer, go to the “Backlink” report, and then click “Broken” to view the invalid status backlink of your site.
Ahrefs backlink profile-broken links
or, you can also go to the “Best by links” report and apply the “404 not found” filter to the “HTTP codes”.
Option 3-use Ahrefs site Explorer to find invalid outgoing links
fixes invalid backlinks internally on your WordPress site is a top priority. But don’t forget to break the outgoing link. This can also frustrate users when you link to corrupted content or resources on other people’s sites. High-quality outgoing links will also play a role in your SEO.
simply put your WordPress site URL in Ahrefs site Explorer, go to the Outgoing links report, and click Broken links. You can then view the article or page where the link is located and the invalid external link on the WordPress website.
Ahrefs disconnected outgoing link
2. Based on spider statistical analysis plug-in
if you are a user of spider statistical analysis plug-in, you can also find 404 invalid links on the site through the status of spider feedback.
Note that in this way, you should install the spider statistical analysis plug-in for a period of time before you can have more accurate data, and the data depends on search engine spiders to crawl logs.
click on the spider log under spider analysis, and then select the status code 404, time selection for all times, and finally click filter to view all 404 status spiders to access the link.
Spider Log 404 status crawl log
warm Tip: because some pseudo spiders or security scanning crawlers may crawl links that do not exist, so 404 spider logs may contain links that do not exist on your site, you can choose to ignore such links.
3. Google search console
Google Search Console is a useful tool provided by Google to help you “monitor, maintain and exclude your site from Google search results”. To get started, you need to use Google Search Console to validate your website. You can then begin to benefit from its features, including 404 status break link detection.
as part of its function, Google Search Console includes a crawl error report that allows you to view all pages that return 404 errors to Google:
Google Search Console crawl report
Click any of these links will open a pop-up window in which you can see which pages are linked to the 404 error page Thus, you can correct the 404 invalid links on these pages: the
crawl report allows you to view the page
4. 4 that links to the 404 page. Desktop software
in addition to web-based SEO detection tools, you can also use desktop software to find invalid links. The most popular option here for
is Screaming Frog, a well-known SEO tool that can be used to find 404 status links for free.
Screaming Frog is available for Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu. After
downloads and installs the program, here is how to use it to find broken links.
first, add your site’s URL to the top box, and then click Start:
to add your site’s URL to Screaming Frog
. Then, you can use the Response Codes option to filter out 404 pages, and then use the Inlinks function at the bottom to find links to these 404 pages: how
uses Screaming Frog to find 404 status links
if you are using Mac,Integrity is also another good desktop SEO tool You can use it to find broken links in WordPress.
5. Online broken link checking tool
if your website is not very large, you can use the free online broken link checking tool to find broken links. A good choice for
is to creatively name it BrokenLinkCheck.com, which allows you to check up to 3000 pages for free.
is also very easy to use-you just visit the website, enter your URL, and click find failed links:
adds your site’s URL to BrokenLinkCheck.com
, and then you can decide whether to report different broken links or all events-all events are more thorough, but may take more time:
chooses how to check for broken links
and then The tool lists all invalid internal and external links and provides links to pages that have failed links:
BrokenLinkCheck.com results
then all you need to do is enter and fix the problematic link.
6. WordPress plug-ins-Broken Link Checker
We do not recommend using WordPress plug-ins to check for invalid links, as they can be a serious drag on the performance of your site. From a performance perspective, it is best to offload these responsibilities to separate tools through any of the above methods.
if you absolutely must use the WordPress plug-in to check for invalid links such as status 404, please don’t keep it active and running. Instead, run the plug-in once, and then remove it from your site after repairing the broken link. But again– our advice is to use only one of the other tools and skip plug-ins. When
talks about breaking the link checker plug-in, the most popular option is the free Broken Link Checker plug-in on WordPress.org. Note: this plug-in is not updated for the time being, and it seems that the developer is trying to request a transfer of ownership. After
installs and activates the plug-in, go to the tool → Broken Links to view a report containing all broken internal and external links: the
Broken Link Checker plug-in interface
to quickly fix any broken links found by the tool, you can hover over the link and select Edit URL to edit the link Without having to open each individual page:
edits URL
summary in the Broken Link Checker plug-in. Broken links on
WordPress sites are bad for the user experience and SEO, so you need to check for broken links regularly and fix them as much as possible.
We recommend an offsite solution for the most performance-friendly way to find invalid links in WordPress. A good choice is:
- SEO detection tools like Ahrefs-if you have the ability to invest in such tools, this is our recommended approach. It is also a good choice for
- to use the spider statistical analysis plug-in, although it contains some abnormal 404 status links.
- Crawl error report in Google Search Console.
- desktop SEO software, such as Screaming Frog.
- is a web-based tool, such as BrokenLinkCheck.com
again, although WordPress plug-ins like Broken Link Checker can easily find broken links on WordPress, we do not recommend them because this approach may affect the performance of the site.
In addition, with regard to how to deal with website deadlinks, it is recommended that you also read how to deal with WordPress website status deadlinks.
