What are broken links and how do they affect your Off-Page SEO strategy?
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:55 am
All broken links are a burden on your link building strategy. Reviewing and fixing your links will allow you to avoid penalties from Google. On the contrary, if there are several useless links pointing to your website, you will most likely be penalized immediately.
What are broken links?
Broken links are links that do not work properly, either because they do not exist or because the specified address no longer exists. What happens when a user clicks on one of these links is that they are redirected to an HTTP 404 page.
This type of link clearly affects the website's SEO strategy and, of course, the user experience, which is why we must eliminate them.
First step, detect and locate broken links
You don't need to review all your links one by one, there are skype database that can do that job for you, telling you which links are no longer useful to your website.
Some of the most commonly used tools for this purpose are Google Webmaster Tools, Webmaster Toolkit or Broken Link Checker, any of which evaluates all the links on your website and locates the defective ones. Some of these tools even automatically notify you if any of your links are broken.
What Google thinks about broken links
As you know, it is essential for Google to position a website with links, however, and increasingly, it is not quantity that matters, but quality. Google establishes a series of parameters to establish the quality of unlinks, the bounce rate or the number of broken links are just two of the criteria it evaluates.
For Google, the quality of links is increasingly important, in fact, some of its biggest updates (Penguin, for example), have focused exclusively on links. If you have broken links on your website, sooner or later you will be penalized.
Broken links facing the user
Broken links on your website are also a problem for users. The user experience is affected by links that do not lead anywhere, and this is harmful both for the user and for Google's evaluation of your page.
At yoSEO Marketing we help you optimize your Off Page strategy, generating quality links that really help you position yourself.
What are broken links?
Broken links are links that do not work properly, either because they do not exist or because the specified address no longer exists. What happens when a user clicks on one of these links is that they are redirected to an HTTP 404 page.
This type of link clearly affects the website's SEO strategy and, of course, the user experience, which is why we must eliminate them.
First step, detect and locate broken links
You don't need to review all your links one by one, there are skype database that can do that job for you, telling you which links are no longer useful to your website.
Some of the most commonly used tools for this purpose are Google Webmaster Tools, Webmaster Toolkit or Broken Link Checker, any of which evaluates all the links on your website and locates the defective ones. Some of these tools even automatically notify you if any of your links are broken.
What Google thinks about broken links
As you know, it is essential for Google to position a website with links, however, and increasingly, it is not quantity that matters, but quality. Google establishes a series of parameters to establish the quality of unlinks, the bounce rate or the number of broken links are just two of the criteria it evaluates.
For Google, the quality of links is increasingly important, in fact, some of its biggest updates (Penguin, for example), have focused exclusively on links. If you have broken links on your website, sooner or later you will be penalized.
Broken links facing the user
Broken links on your website are also a problem for users. The user experience is affected by links that do not lead anywhere, and this is harmful both for the user and for Google's evaluation of your page.
At yoSEO Marketing we help you optimize your Off Page strategy, generating quality links that really help you position yourself.