Checking any website or webpage for broken links in seconds is difficult when we are doing it manually. A broken link checker is what you need to find dead internal and external backlinks.

You will learn:

• The need to monitor backlinks and identify broken links
• How to find broken backlinks
• What to do to keep the quality of your backlink and grow.

One of the most effective ways to increase your online business is through backlinks. But your backlink profile is not always filled with quality links, sometimes you will experience broken links. And, you need to fix these links to keep your website quality in Google’s eyes.

That’s what we’re talking about today, along with how to manage your backlinks building.

What you need to know about backlink building

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are incredibly valuable for SEO as they are still one of the top 3 factors in Google ranking. This is because these backlinks are seen as a vote of some sort from one website to the other. 

There are inbound links and outbound links. Inbound links are links that come from other websites or a different domain name. Outbound links are those links on your website that link out to websites with a different domain name.

The backlinks received by your website are a good sign to all search engines that other sites find your website trustworthy. Thus, your site looks more legitimate and informative for potential users. Due to this, you’re able to move up the rankings with these types of backlink ‘votes.’

Why do you need to monitor and fix your backlinks?

The more authoritative backlinks a website has, the more Google will view it as an authority which in turn results in higher keyword rankings. As a result, you need to make sure your level of authority keeps maintaining or rising. 

If you get penalized, it reduces your page rank, decreasing the chances that your content will be found. In addition, you will never know in advance when your backlinks disappear or broke. You can even miss your backlinks for weeks and months if you do not monitor your profile regularly. Some webmasters and website owners who don’t update their website regularly might not even be aware that they have these broken links on their site unless a user tells them so.

Broken backlinks

A broken backlink is often referred to as a dead link. It occurs when a webpage linking to you becomes malfunctioning. To be more specific, when you click on a link that is supposed to take you to particular content (your page), it takes you to another page that shows a 404 error message. 

What causes broken link:

• The website is temporarily or permanently unavailable
• The web page has been deleted
• The web page permalink was modified or changed
• The web page was blocked by a firewall or other similar software

Why are broken links bad for your sites?

Firstly, broken backlinks affect your traffic. Traffic is one of the major components of having a good page ranking on search engines. One backlink fall off can decrease your sources of getting more readers.

Secondly, broken backlinks, if not fix quickly, can harm your SEO. In Google eye, these broken links can be seen as bad backlinks, adding no score to crawl your page higher.

It is important to update your website regularly because your partner’s website won’t always notify you if they have made any changes or moved the link to another location. There is also the possibility of external servers being brought down temporarily or permanently as well as domains could be expired or sold. 

So, the best thing is to control your site. You can take precautionary action by checking your website regularly. With a broken link checker, you can know whether the website that links to you is broken, so you can get rid of it as it can be considered bad backlinks.

Find broken backlinks with a Broken link checker

Before jumping into how to fix broken links, we first need to detect them. 

Use a backlink checker like BacklinkGap

BacklinkGap shows you which site linking to you is broken. Then you can nip them in the bud before they negatively impact your SEO. It’s often easier to use an SEO backlink checker like BacklinkGap to find these toxic backlinks. 

By using the monitoring feature, you can get your eyes on the backlinks you want. BacklinkGap will monitor these backlinks daily and notify you of any changes that happened.

The tool can help you identify broken links in an instant. It allows you to make better decisions and take quick actions to fix them. 

You can see your broken link in the list and add it to disavow list or add a tag to fix it then.

This backlink checker will also get you notified of new and lost backlinks. You can get the latest updates on any backlinks or referring domains that you’ve gained or lost. You can also immediately reach out to websites for missing or removed links.

While monitoring, you can adjust the dashboard by pause, resume or remove the backlinks. 

What to do after using a backlink checker?

As these are backlinks, it is hard for you to fix the link from your sites. There are only two ways, contact the webpage or disavow the link.

You can reach out to the webpage and notify them about the broken pages. Then, ask whether it can be fixed since they also need to improve their website quality.

Removing the link is the solution when you cannot contact the sites that link to you. It is often called disavow links. It can be time-consuming if you have a lot of broken links. But the process is straightforward, just locate the link in the content, then add it to a disavow file. You can disavow the bad backlinks like that with Google Search Console.

BacklinkGap is also here to help you say goodbye to these bad links. You can gather all your unwanted backlinks, disavow them, then relax as your rankings recover.

You add all the broken backlinks to the Disavow list in the tool. From the Disavow List view, you can see all the backlinks that you want to disavow. You can then extract the data you want in a CSV report.

A disavow file is a request for Google to ignore the links which you upload and ensure that they are not taken into account when analyzing your site’s ranking factors. It is a great way to handle toxic links.

You can simply upload them to Google’s Search Console disavow tool. Google does provide guidance regarding the formatting and disavow file limitations set. 

If you haven’t known much about disavow backlinks probably, read this: How to Disavow Links: A Guide with A Disavow Tool

How to build backlinks effectively?

Guest blogging

If your brand provides quality content, people will come back for more. It’s really as simple as that. 

Guest posting on other related sites allows you to display your depth of knowledge in your field. One last advantage of guest posting is that it allows you to get a backlink to your website, which is a major factor in SEO ranking. 

You can start by making a list of anywhere from 10-50 sites that you’d like to guest post for. Reach out, then provide your content.

Skyscraper technique

The skyscraper technique focuses on finding the best piece of content out there around a particular keyword. Then you need to create something even better with the goal of offering this new content as a replacement backlink to the websites that have linked to old content.

There are three steps that’ll make the skyscraper technique work:

• Find popular content that’s already ranking for your target keyword
• Create a piece of high-quality content
• Promote your piece of content to the blogs and publications that refer or link back to some of the best performing pieces of content for your target keyword

Write testimonials

Not only is review helpful to a customer during the decision-making process but testimonials and reviews are also an excellent way to establish trust and credibility for your business. Testimonials and reviews provide benefits to three parties: The consumer, the reviewed business, and the reviewer. Since when leaving reviews, is a link-building opportunity. Your personal information when providing reviews can come with your business links.

If you’re interested in attracting links via the testimonial method, you’ll first need to reach out to companies with whom you do business. 

TL;DR

Website masters have to put a lot more effort to obtain quality backlinks. Monitor backlink is one vital work to get the eyes on every change in backlink profile. A broken backlink can harm your SEO and website reputation. You need to identify and choose the way to fix it as fast as possible. 

You can use a broken link checker like BacklinkGap to find broken backlinks faster.

Then, you also need to find the best ways the build backlinks more.

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Updated: 26 April 2024