Are you exhausted from the constant task of discovering and resolving broken links on your WordPress site?
Have you ever yearned for an infallible method to effortlessly monitor all internal and external links on a regular basis, without incurring exorbitant expenses?
If you’re like me and countless other astute website owners, you’ve likely pondered such a solution multiple times throughout your WordPress journey.
Today, I am thrilled to introduce my latest innovation, Broken Link Checker, an unobtrusive tool that operates discreetly in the background of your site, providing you with unparalleled peace of mind.
We have developed this tool to facilitate the swift examination of your site for broken links, allowing for easy rectification to enhance search engine optimization (SEO).
What is Broken Link Checker?
Broken Link Checker is a robust WordPress plugin designed to perform regular website crawls and verify the integrity of every link, ensuring that none are broken.
Implemented as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, it offloads the processing burden from your WordPress hosting server, preventing any performance degradation or slowdowns.
The development of the Broken Link Checker plugin was undertaken by the same team responsible for AIOSEO (All in One SEO), widely recognized as the premier SEO plugin for WordPress.
When broken links are identified, the plugin provides a seamless mechanism for rectifying them directly within the plugin interface, eliminating the need to individually visit the pages where those links are located.
Why Do You Need Broken Link Checker?
Broken links can be highly frustrating for website visitors, potentially leading to their departure from your site. Moreover, they can significantly impact your website’s SEO, conversion rates, and overall sales.
In WordPress sites, broken links commonly arise during domain name migrations or when posts or pages are deleted without proper redirection.
Occasionally, typographical errors can also result in broken links that go unnoticed for extended periods, if not years. Furthermore, if you hyperlink to external websites that undergo page changes, deletions, or complete shutdowns, your own site may be left with broken links.
Hence, it is crucial to regularly monitor and address broken links on your WordPress website.
While various SaaS-based broken link checkers exist in the market, most are either prohibitively expensive or not tailored specifically for WordPress websites.
Consequently, I collaborated with my team to create an accessible and user-friendly broken link checker exclusively for WordPress.
With Broken Link Checker, you can:
- Perform comprehensive site-wide link scans every three days.
- Identify valid links, broken links, and redirects.
- Customize which post types (e.g., posts, pages, custom post types) and statuses (e.g., published, draft) to monitor.
- Exclude specific URLs from the checking process.
- And much more.
If you are committed to your website’s success and aspire to expand your online business, you undoubtedly recognize the paramount importance of delivering a seamless browsing experience to your visitors.
After all, the last thing you want your readers to encounter is a daunting “404 page not found” error message, effectively serving as a dead end on your WordPress site.
How to Use Broken Link Checker in WordPress
To begin, you should install and activate the Broken Link Checker plugin on your WordPress site.
For comprehensive instructions, please refer to our detailed guide on installing a WordPress plugin.
Once installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your Broken Link Checker account.
Upon establishing the connection between the plugin and your account, you can enable the toggle switch to prevent search engines from following broken links. Additionally, you have the option to disable the modification of the modified date for a page or post when a link is updated through the plugin.
By navigating to the Broken Links tab, you will observe that the plugin has automatically scanned your entire site, categorizing the links as broken, redirects, or dismissed.
The Broken Link Checker plugin facilitates swift and straightforward resolution of broken links directly within the plugin. To rectify a broken link, simply click on Edit URL.
Alternatively, if you wish to remove the link altogether, click on Unlink, and the link will be removed from the respective page.
After making the necessary updates to the link, you can verify its status by clicking the Recheck option to confirm whether it is still broken. If desired, you may dismiss the message from the plugin.