Websites are full of external, internal links, and linked images because they are crucial for SEO. But a very bad experience is broken links.
A broken link is any kind of link on a website that doesn’t work. It can be a link to a website or even an image.
The reason for the broken link can be different – the destination page doesn’t exist anymore, the URL has changed, etc.
Also Read: How To Redirect Pages
So, you always need to monitor your links and you must be sure that all of your links are working properly.
To monitor, find, and fix broken links on a WordPress website is very easy. There is a great plugin that finds links that need fix and notifies you.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to configure the plugin and fix broken links easily.
Install & Configure Plugin
There are several broken link checker plugins but I like Broken Link Checker by WPMU DEV the most. It is a very simple, easy-to-use, and powerful plugin.
Install and activate it from the WordPress plugin repository. After the activation, there will be two new links on the WordPress dashboard.
One under the Settings and another in the Tools section. First, go to Link Checker in the Settings panel. The plugin is configured from here.
In the General tab, you can change several things. You can choose how often links should be checked by setting the hour range. Twenty-four hours is a good choice.
You can get email notifications about changes and you can modify how broken links look on the page with additional CSS.
On the Look For Links In you can choose where this plugin should search for broken links. You can check links on pages, posts, comments, custom fields, etc.
On the next tab, there are settings for the type of links. This plugin allows you to check HTML links, HTML images, Youtube links, Vimeo links, and more.
So, depending on the types of links on your website, you can pick what you want the plugin to do and save the changes.
And on the Advanced tab, you can change the additional settings. You can set a timeout for a link. For example, if a link takes 10 seconds to load, you can mark it as broken.
Also, you can run checker hourly, show or hide plugin widget for different users, set server load limit, and so on. Most of the time, I leave these settings to default.
After you save your preferred settings, you can see all your links in one place.
How To Check Broken Links
Go to Tools > Broken Links and here you will find all the links you have on your website. You can clearly see working and broken links. Also, warnings and redirects.
And you can easily fix the problems from this dashboard. The plugin shows you the destination URL, status of the link, anchor text, and page source where the link is located.
You can find links with issues quickly and solve the problems. This plugin not only finds links but broken images too.
Also Read: WordPress Website Migration
But you don’t have to go here to check the links. This plugin has a dedicated widget for the dashboard and from there you will see if there is any problem with any link.
Just go to Dashboard, click the Screen Options drop-down menu, and tick the Broken Link Checker.
It will place the widget on your dashboard and you will easily find and fix any problematic link.
Conclusion
Fixing broken links is very important for every website. Any WordPress website must use some kind of plugin to check and fix problematic links. This plugin is very simple to use and powerful.
I highly recommend installing it. You will always be aware of the status of your links.
