If you are a website owner, then at some point in time, you must have encountered the 404 page not found error. It is known as a broken link and one of the common problems on almost every website. It can prove to be a real pain, especially when you are serious about SEO your site’s ranking on Google. Now you do not need to worry about it much. Here we will share some of the amazing tips that can help you find and fix up the broken links in your word press site. So let’s get started.

What are Broken Links?

Broken links are often caused by outdated plugins or themes that no longer work properly with the latest WordPress releases.

The most common scenarios where broken links will occur in a WordPress site is when a plugin or theme is stopped working when WordPress upgrades its system to a newer version and breaks compatibility with older plugins and themes, or when you run into problems on your website, and you decide to remove certain plugins and themes.

Broken links in WordPress sites can be a common occurrence. If you have found a broken link on your WordPress website, then there are several steps you should take to fix them.

There are three types of broken links that you can find on your WordPress website:

  • 404 pages (pages not found)
  • Broken 404 pages (pages with broken content)
  • Broken 302 redirects

How to Check Broken Links in WordPress?

WordPress makes it easy to create an attractive website and make it functional. However, creating a website with many links and pages can be quite tedious. That’s why we have given this guide on checking broken links in WordPress.

First Method:

If you’re not sure how to check broken links in WordPress, follow these steps:

Step 1: Open your site within the browser window and press Ctrl + F5 keys together on your keyboard.

Step 2: On the search bar at the top, type “broken link”.

Step 3: Press the enter button on your keyboard. The result should be a list of all the broken links in your blog.

Second Method:

To see which links are broken on your site, head over to the “Sitemap” tab on the WordPress dashboard. When you click on the Sitemap tab, it will show all the pages and posts on your site with their corresponding URLs. To see if a particular page or post has any broken links, check the URL next to its title, then hover over the “broken link” icon in the top right corner of your browser window.

With Broken Link Checker Tool:

Broken links can be a pain, especially when you have a lot of content on your site. This is why it is important to use Broken Link Checker to find and remove broken links from all of your pages.

You can find this tool by going to the official website for WordPress, clicking on Tools, and then Broken Link Checkers. From here, you will be able to download the plugin, which will allow you to search for broken links on any WordPress site. The plugin will also give you a detailed report of all the broken links found on your website so that you can easily fix them or remove them.

How do I use this plugin?

First, go to Plugins > Add New and search for Broken Link Checker in the search bar. Install it and then activate it on your website. You can now access it under Tools > Broken Link Checker or click on the icon found at the top right of your screen.

Why use the Broken Link Checker Tool?

There are many benefits of using the Broken Link Checker, from avoiding crawling errors or 404s all the way to speed up your site’s load time. It works well with most websites and responsive themes and plugins and should be considered by every blogger and website owner who wants their website performance optimized for robots and search engines alike.

First, you need to download and install the broken link checker plugin.

You need to go to the settings and then select the link checker in your WordPress admin dashboard to activate it.

General settings

From the general settings, you will easily be checking the status of all the broken links. The best part is that this plugin checks all the links after every 72 hours, and in case any new broken link detects; it sends a notification regarding the same. With this plugin, you also get the authority to enable the notifications for the authors to easily get notified regarding the broken links available in their posts. If you change any general setting, it is necessary to save it. Otherwise, the changes will not be made.

Look out for the links

The look for links tab helps you set the location of the broken link checker so that it becomes easier for you to monitor the links from those locations. The comments and page blog posts are enabled in the plugin by default. If you want more places to be added, you can use this option.

Which links to check?

With this tool, you can also set the type of links that you want to check. The HTML links, images, and embedded YouTube videos are enabled by default in this plugin.

Protocols & APIs

The broken link checker uses the YouTube API and basic HTTP by default. If you are using any additional service, you need to enable their API. After enabling, you will get notifications regarding the dead or broken links available on your site.

How to Fix the Broken Links in WordPress?

Using Broken Link Checker Tool:

The first step to fixing this problem is by checking your 404-page error logs to see if you can find out why these errors are occurring or what you can do to fix them.

Once you gather enough information about the issue, then use your link analysis plugin like Broken Link Checker to check for broken links on your website and try fixing them one by one until they are all resolved.

To fix the broken links with the help of the broken link tool, you need to go to the list of the broken URLs found and then hover over each URL, and choose the edit link option. Once you choose the option, you will get suggestions about the link you want to replace it with, which link, etc. After choosing the option, click on the update tab.

Along with this, you can also use the unlink option if you’d rather remove the link altogether.

You need to determine that the broken link checker tool continuously scans your website, so it is necessary to revisit the screen from time to time to ensure that the links are functioning correctly.

Use WP-Rewrite or WP-Super-Cache Plugins:

You can use a plugin like WP-Rewrite or WP-Super-Cache. The plugin will automatically rewrite all your URLs to fix any broken ones.

Another way that some people use is by creating redirects with server configuration settings before updating their websites.

Finally

WordPress is a content management system that helps build, design, and maintain websites. It offers many opportunities for website owners to produce their own digital experiences. Nonetheless, WordPress sites are prone to breakage. This happens more than once. This can result in loss of business when visitors cannot access the site or content that is important for them. Hence it is always necessary to find and fix the broken links as soon as possible.