What is a Broken Link?

22 May 2017
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What is a Broken Link?

Broken link (a.k.a. Dead link) is the hyperlink to a webpage that no longer works.

Broken links make it impossible for website guests to access the needed content and make them turn to other websites instead. Websites with broken links are likely to be downplayed by search engines and have a lower conversion rate.

There are several reasons why a link can be broken. The most prevalent ones are:

  • website owner provided an incorrect URL for the link;
  • the linked page has been removed on the destination website (in this case the 404 Error Page will be displayed);
  • the destination website has been moved to another domain or no longer exists;
  • Some software or a firewall on the user’s side blocks access to the webpage;
  • the site itself or an area of the website is behind the firewall that does not allow access from the outside.

Link rot

The process of hyperlinks ‘dying’, i.e. stopping to point to the desired content, is referred to as link rot. Other terms for ‘link rot’ are ‘link death’, ‘link breaking’ or ‘reference rot’.

A number of studies have investigated the prevalence of the link rot over the web. Some of them revealed each week about one of the 200 links becomes broken. The rate of link rot is reported to constitute 5% a year, meaning that 5% of all the links on the Internet ‘die’ every year.

Dealing with broken links

Broken links can be addressed in 2 main ways: you can either deal with broken links that already exist on your website or you can prevent link rot. To successfully deal with broken links you should resort to both ways.

Detecting and fixing broken links. Detecting broken links can be done manually or automatically. There is a number of established tools on the web that help you detect broken links on your website. Among them you can trust V3C Link Checker, Dead Link Checker, Online Broken Link Checker and other tools. Moreover, you can use a number of plugins for popular website engines, such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other engines. However, the best way to check for broken links is manual checkup, as a page can be available (returning HTTP 200 (OK) response), but the content of the page may no longer be relevant.

Preventing link rot. Here are some tips on how to prevent appearance of broken links on your website.

  • Use reliable link building strategies. You may find these SEO tools handy.
  • Use the most compact and direct URLs available. You may resort to URL normalization or URL canonicalization
  • Avoid linking to unreliable sources, PDF documents and pages that are deep in a website (deep linking).
  • Minimize URL change and page removal.
  • If this is impossible, use redirection mechanisms, for instance, "301: Moved Permanently" to refer browsers and crawlers to the new page

Related terms: hyperlink, Web page, 404 error, Firewall.

References and further reading: