Why finding, fixing and maintaining your broken links is critical to user experience
Your team has put hours of thought and work into the content you’re presenting on your website. You’ve published detailed infographics, informative blogs and displayed compelling copy for your products. Your users love it and they’re moving through buyer stages as they consume your content. They click here, click there when all of a sudden it happens. They come across a dead link.
A few thoughts are going through their mind at this moment and they’re not overly positive. The most detrimental to your business though is the idea that, “if their website doesn’t even work, what does that say about the quality of their products?”
If your only solution is the hope that they’ll enter different search terms or contact your customer service line, you’re already losing potential business. After all, the internet’s reputation is not one of patience and understanding. Customers will simply click away or even worse, explore a competitive offering.
The truth is, you’re not only losing credibility with your customers, but with Google as well. If you’re investing in SEO and spending hours researching keywords, this easy rank boosting tip will make your day: Check for broken links on your website right now and fix them. Search engine crawlers are impacted in the same way customers are when they come across a broken link. Just like your customers, they immediately move on. The page they skipped, yours, remains unranked.
The most obvious impact, however, is that broken links negatively impact your website traffic. When users don’t click through to your site (because the broken link stops them), Google assumes your site is not important. You are assigned a lower content quality rating and your ranking plummets.
Together, we can fix this.
As savvy marketers in a digital world, you’re probably hoping there is an easy solution to this problem. The good news is there are a couple of options available to you.
- Use a free SEO / broken link tool
These tools will quickly scan your site and the internet to find broken links that you should address. While they may be the least expensive option, you might find yourself inundated with ads, malware and spam. My stance on this is, if you needed a plumber to fix a massive leak, would you hire the first guy who came along offering free plumbing services? Probably not. Would you attempt to fix it yourself? Maybe, but chances are you’ll call in an expert.
- Choose a proven, reliable service that will continually deliver
Like this one. Our promise to you is that we’ll find all of your broken links on your site and across the internet as well. We tackle what the free services offer, but we take it a few steps further. We’ll constantly scan for broken links in the background so you can focus on what’s really important – your customers.
When you have healthy links directing customers to and throughout your website, you dramatically improve their experience and your credibility.