How can I find and fix my broken links
-
There are a number(110) links that SEOmoz has found to have 404 errors. I have been able to find and fix many of them but there are links that are coming from our home page that do not seem to exist. I cannot even find the links in our system in wordpress. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Is there a way to locate where the links are originating from?
-
HI Paul,
I agree 100% with you, in the case you want to check external links. That's why I try to solve my errors on GWT so I can see new external errors showing up.
However in this case I got confused by this sentence:
_ I have been able to find and fix many of them but there are links that are coming from our home page that do not seem to exist._
I thought that he was speaking aboiut links generated inside his homepage. However if the case are external links, I recommend spry advice, but only for few links. If you have many of them you can consider to use GWT API and download all the broken links with their own linking urls. An information which google used to share before but that now is not available in GWT (at least not in mine)
-
Mememax, you're talking about a completely different situation.
Screaming Frog/Xenu are only capable of broken links that your own site links to.
The SEOMoz and WMT crawls are finding missing pages that other sites are linking to on your site. I.e. broken incoming links as opposed to broken internal links.
While both are good to check, if you aren't watching for and fixing your 404s that other sites are linking to, you are potentially throwing away hugely valuable incoming link juice. (Hint: it's even more valuable juice than what is passing from your internal links)
A simple example of this occurs when you just move a page to a new URL, and update your own site's navigation. A Screaming Frog crawl would show no 404 as a result (because you updated your own site's link), but all the incoming links to that moved page could now be 404ing. It's entirely possible that other sites were linking to that page. If you don't watch your broken incoming links reports either in SEOMoz to WMT, you won't know that those other sites are still trying to link. And then you'd be throwing away that incoming link equity.
Makes sense?
Paul
P.S, Of course, you can also monitor your 404s in Google Analytics, but that only shows you broken incoming links that are getting traffic. The other tools mentioned will show you nearly all the broken incoming links even if they're not currently driving traffic. By fixing them, you'll rescue the ranking value and also be ready if they later start to drive actual referral traffic.
-
Sincerely I've never used seomoz tools for crawwling my site to find 404s.
I always used screamingfrog/xenu(last one is free), which gives you not only the url where the error is found but also the type of links and its anchor text. In that way it would be easy to quick find the error, because maybe it's a realtive links which is malformed and pointing to a non existing url.
-
Funny, there was just a question about this a few hours ago (hint, hint SEOmoz team). Here was my advice...
The SEOmoz report will give you one referrer for each 404 error. I've had better success and more complete information using Google Webmaster Tools. You get the information "straight from the horse's mouth" as it were.
- Log in to https://www.google.com/webmasters/
- Go to Health > Crawl Errors
- Click "Not Found"
- For each listed, click the URL
- In the pop up window, the third tab will list the pages that link in.
-
Click on "Export to csv" in the top right hand corner of your crawl report.
When the file downloads, there is a field called "referrer" which will tell you the exact page the broken link was found on.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Where can I find where to submit my website to?
Hi there, I am currently reading and learning about backlinks and I find myself stumped as to where I can submit my website to. I understand the logic's and methods for backlinks but just don't know how to find good quality websites to submit my website to. I appreciate any help in advance. Jay
Link Building | | VoodooCreativeLtd0 -
Using Bing's linkfromdomain: operator I'm finding spam links
Hi I've recently discovered Bing's linkfromdomain: operator and have been testing it on a few of my wordpress sites which are running the DIVI theme from elegant themes These are new sites with little or no content yet I was a bit alarmed when the results showed site I definitely had not linked to eg slickdeals dot net
Link Building | | briandee
2521.gen778 dot com
9gag dot com
flowers.ftd dot com
www.jmldirect dot com
pubs.rsna dot org is this an error from the Bing linkfromdomain: operaror because when I run the domains through xenu these sites do not show Hope someone can help0 -
Linking Between Sites
Hi everyone, Hope you are all doing well. If a company owns several different websites that are supposed to be different brands but are part of the same niche/sector is it OK to link between them? Or would this be seen as violation? Thanks
Link Building | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Will short linking to my site affect SERPs attribution of inbound link?
Some brand partners are using their short links to link back to our site (like bit.ly but they have their own). They have a high domain authority and trust so we want that link back to be read by Google. When I downloaded all inbound links from Moz, this brand's site was not listed, making me worried that the inbound link isn't being seen or considered! Haven't been able to find any info on this...
Link Building | | PAC31350 -
Info on paid links and damage they can do?
I'm kind of new to SEO and have the following question. If you're say a wedding supplier and are looking to get listed on some of the many online weddings directories out there, for example: http://www.thebridalfile.co.uk Most of these sites charge for an ad with a link, would this come under the banner of paid links and therefore be damaging form an SEO point of view? Nearly all wedding directories generate a substantial part of their revenue from these types of ads. Obviously the ad itself will generate traffic but I'm wondering whether the search engines will see these as paid links which will be penalised? or is this different to simply paying someone to get your links on their network of sites which, as I understand it, is the issue that google have with paid links? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Link Building | | EdoubleD0 -
JavaScript is crawled by search engines, isn’t it? Does it mean that links embedded in JavaScript pass link juice?
I wonder If links embedded in JavaScript from an external Website pass link juice to the linked page and thus have a positive effect on google rankings. I read that JavaScipt is craweld. Does it mean that also the link juice is passed? I'm looking forward to your answers.
Link Building | | Tabea0 -
What to do with some good links I have?
I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?
Link Building | | Svetoslav0 -
Is it possible to find the highest authority websites for links based on a specific search phrase?
I am trying to find high relevancy websites that would possibly help my ranking for a search term. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | dbowmanfl0