broken link checker

WordPress Broken Link Checker – Say Goodbye to Dead Links

What are broken links?

Prior to discussing the broken link checker tool, it is important to comprehend what broken links are. Broken links are hyperlinks on a website that lead to pages that no longer exist or have been moved to a different URL. When a user clicks on a broken link, they will typically see an error message or a blank page, which can be frustrating and negatively impact their experience on the website. Broken links can occur for a variety of reasons, such as website redesigns, changes in content management systems, or external websites that have removed or relocated their pages.

Broken links can also harm a website’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Search engines like Google use links as a way to determine the relevance and authority of a website and broken links can signal to search engines that a website is outdated or poorly maintained. This can result in lower search engine rankings and less traffic to the website.

It is important for website owners to regularly check for broken links on their websites and fix them as soon as possible. A broken link checker tool, such as the WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin, can make this process easier and more efficient.

Broken Link Checker plugin

A strong WordPress plugin called Broken Link Checker will periodically crawl your website and check each link to make sure they are all working properly.

It is designed as a SaaS service, so it never overtaxes or slows down your WordPress hosting server.

The same group that created the top WordPress SEO plugin, AIOSEO (All in One SEO), also created the Broken Link Checker plugin.

The plugin makes it simple for you to fix broken links directly from within the plugin, without even having to go to the specific pages where those links were added.

Why Is a Broken Link Checker Necessary?

Visitors to your website may become irritated by broken links and leave. They may even lower sales, conversions, and SEO for your website.

Broken links on WordPress sites typically appear when a site is transferred to a new domain name or when a post or page is deleted without proper redirection.

Typographical errors can occasionally result in broken links that go unnoticed for months or even years. Even worse, your website will have broken links if you ever link to an external website that isn’t yours and that website later changes, deletes, or shuts down.

For this reason, it’s crucial to regularly check your WordPress website for broken links.

There are SaaS broken link checkers available, but the majority are either exorbitantly expensive or weren’t created with WordPress websites in mind.

You can use Broken Link Checker to…

Every 3 days, scan all links on your website.
Identify working and broken links as well as redirects
select the post types (posts, pages, or custom post types) and statuses that you want to use.
(published, draught, etc.) to keep track of
exclude some URLs from the check
… and a tonne more.

Offering a seamless website browsing experience to your visitors is crucial if you take your website seriously and want to expand your online business.

How to use the WordPress Broken Link Checker

The first step is to install and enable Broken Link Checker on your website.

The plugin must then be linked to your Broken Link Checker account.

You can enable the toggle to prevent search engines from following broken links after logging in with your account and connecting the plugin. Even better, you can choose to have the plugin not update a page’s or post’s modified date whenever a link is changed.

The plugin has automatically scanned the entire site, and when you click the Broken Links tab, you can see that links have been classified as broken, redirects, and dismissed.

With the Broken Link Checker plugin, you can quickly and easily fix broken links inside of your plugin. Click Edit URL to replace a broken link immediately.

Alternatively, you can unlink the link by clicking on it; this will take the link off the page.

By selecting the Recheck option after updating the link, you can determine whether it is still inoperable. You may even choose to ignore the plugin’s message.

Obtain More Information About Each Link

Broken Link Checker provides additional information for each link, such as the duration of the broken link, response header details, the HTTP Status code, and more.

Manage the types of pages that are scanned

Broken Link Checker’s advanced settings, which give you complete control over which pages get scanned, are another crucial feature. You can configure the plugin to track specific post types (posts, pages, or custom post types) and statuses (published, draught, etc.).

You can also choose not to check a specific set of pages.

This enables you to more effectively manage the crawl budget and avoid wasting your link scan credits.

Scan Your Website Correctly

Broken Link Checker scans both internal (links from one page of your website to another page) and external (links from your website to other websites) links on your website.

Broken Link Checker scans (or, in other words, pings) your website for broken links in contrast to other WordPress plugins. Because pinging external sites from your servers repeatedly can make your website appear suspicious to internet service providers, increasing the likelihood that your sites will be blacklisted.

Because of this, the majority of WordPress hosting providers have added traditional broken link checker plugins to their list of prohibited items.

You can feel secure knowing that Broken Link Checker uses an external private server to ping external links.

Advantages of Broken Link Checker

Using a broken link checker can have several benefits for website owners, particularly for website maintenance and SEO. Here are some ways that a broken link checker can be helpful:

Improving user experience: When users encounter broken links on a website, it can be frustrating and lead to a negative experience. By using a broken link checker to identify and fix broken links, website owners can improve user experience and keep users engaged with their content.

Boosting search engine rankings: Search engines like Google consider broken links as a signal of poor website maintenance and may penalize websites with broken links by lowering their search engine rankings. By fixing broken links with a broken link checker, website owners can ensure that their website is up-to-date and well-maintained, which can help improve their search engine rankings.

Saving time and effort: Manually checking for broken links on a website can be time-consuming and tedious, particularly for larger websites. By using a broken link checker, website owners can automate the process of finding broken links, which can save time and effort.

Maintaining website reputation: Broken links can harm a website’s reputation, particularly if the website is intended to be a reliable source of information. By fixing broken links with a broken link checker, website owners can maintain their website’s reputation and ensure that their content is trustworthy and reliable.

Common issues or limitations

There are some common issues or limitations that users may encounter. Here are some of the most common issues and how to troubleshoot them:

Plugin conflicts: The Broken Link Checker plugin may conflict with other plugins or themes on a website, which can cause errors or slow down the website. To troubleshoot this issue, try deactivating other plugins one by one to see if the issue resolves. If the issue persists, try switching to a different theme to see if that resolves the issue.

Server timeouts: If a website has a large number of pages or links, the Broken Link Checker plugin may take a long time to scan the website, which can result in server timeouts or errors. To troubleshoot this issue, try adjusting the plugin settings to scan only a portion of the website at a time or increase the server timeout limit.

False positives: The Broken Link Checker plugin may identify some links as broken when they are actually working correctly. To troubleshoot this issue, try manually clicking on the links to confirm whether they are actually broken or not. If the links are working correctly, try adding them to the plugin’s whitelist to prevent them from being identified as broken in the future.

Slow website performance: The Broken Link Checker plugin can be resource-intensive and may slow down website performance, particularly on websites with a large number of pages or links. To troubleshoot this issue, try adjusting the plugin settings to limit the frequency of link checking or disabling certain features that are not needed.

Plugin compatibility: The Broken Link Checker plugin may not be compatible with certain versions of WordPress or other plugins. To troubleshoot this issue, try updating to the latest version of WordPress and other plugins, or contacting the plugin developer for support.

Wrapping Up

WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin is a powerful tool that can help website owners identify and fix broken links on their websites. Broken links can negatively impact user experience, harm search engine rankings, and damage a website’s reputation, so it’s essential to regularly check for and fix broken links. By using the Broken Link Checker plugin, website owners can automate the process of finding and fixing broken links, improve user experience, boost search engine rankings, save time and effort, and maintain their website’s reputation. Web owners should be aware of some common issues and limitations of the plugin and troubleshoot them accordingly. WordPress Broken Link Checker plugin is an essential tool for website maintenance and optimization that website owners should consider implementing.

1) Sitechecker

The Sitechecker is one of the best-broken link checker tools. The tool uses its scanner to go through the whole website and check for any broken links as well as tell you how to fix them.

Sitechecker can check 100 web pages for free of cost. After the scan, it gives you the full report including broken links, redirect chains, orphan links, indexation errors. It also finds out any content error like meta tag issues and thin pages.

Website – Sitechecker

2) W3C Link Checker

W3C Link Checker is a user-friendly broken link checker which give you many different options like if you want to hide the redirects, check only docs, display summary only and heading, etc.

Obtained results after scanning are displayed the actual status of the links and also listing any issues found during the session. It is the free broken link checker which is the part of Quality Web Tool and W3C’s Validators.

Website – W3C Link Checker

3) Online Broken Link Checker

The online validation tool which checks the web pages for broken links, missing links, authorizes and accounts bad hyperlinks if found any.

You can scan an unlimited number of web pages and works for both internal & external links. The checker also specifies the location of the broken link in the HTML code. The tool supports the windows, IOS, Linux and Mac OS as well.

We cannot say that this is entirely free tool because free version has restrictions of 3,000 pages which is good and bad as well.

Website – Online Broken Link Checker

4) Dead Link Checker

The Dead Link Checker scans your website by systematically and finds the broken links that are harming your sites. The checker creates an HTML output for speedily viewing of the scanning result. It can detect multiple problems like Page not found, Timeout, Server error and more error which cause website crash.

The DLC uses the three different methods of detecting broken links i.e Site Check, Multi Check, Auto Check. The scanning process can be stopped and resumed anytime and it can simultaneously check multi-links at a time.

Website – Dead Link Checker

5) Dr. Link Check

This is the specialized link checker which all the internal, external, linked images, en-queued style sheet and JavaScript files for missing links.

The Dr. Link Check do a full scan of the whole website including HTML and CSS code. The scans elements go through multiple tests to ensure that there is nothing left unchecked which reduce your site performance and loss of visitors.

Dr. Link Check can check 1000 links of your website for free and resultant gives you the summarized details of every threat like internal, external, and broken links. You can plan an automated check to scan your website for any broken links.

Website – Dr. Link Check

6) Xenu’s Link Sleuth

Xenu’s Link Sleuth free to use open source tool to detect broken links for your website. Just paste your website link on the website and crawler automatically links to your site and start crawling the website.

The crawler starts detecting the broken links and link confirmation is also done on images, borders, plug-ins, backgrounds, style sheets, scripts, and Java applets. The results report can be created at any time the user wants to see.

The useful features you get is crawler can execute files lesser than 1 MB and it also supports SSL websites and sitemap as well.

Website – Xenu’s Link Sleuth

7) Integrity Link Checker

This tool depends upon the website area, this tool takes interval to complete the work report. The checker sort the results in various ways like it can only check bad links, by selecting an option on the report page.

Integrity Link Checker also injects the dead links from the comment forms. There are various different options like transferring the data, verification, multiple sites handling, generate sitemap, spell check are also ready to use in website check.

It works amazingly with the bigger websites without taking much time. Crawler also checks for broken images. Exports reports in the .pdf document.

Website – Integrity Link Checker

8) Google Webmaster

Google Webmaster is open source SEO tool that checks and maintains the performance of your website. The google needs authentication to access the content of your website.

The Google Webmaster lets you create new post and pages so that google crawler can scan and eliminate those contents which you don’t search engine handler to learn.

It allows you to optimize your website by keyword SEO. It also lets you access the valuable information which give boost to your advertising campaigns.

Website – Google Webmaster

9) WP Broken Link Status Checker

The WordPress Link Checker works on the different method it authenticates the status of HTTP code of all your website content like links and images.

WP Broken Link Checker crawl through the website content while performing it’s like removing links and images and then look up for broken links, re-directions, empty links, etc. The crawling process does multiple scan check and generates its own results.

The crawler runs in the background so that you can continue with your work. WP Checker has sharp-edge filtering technology. Directly edit the content straightly from the crawler reports. The WP Checker also come with additional URL tools to perform any major changes.

Website – WP Broken Link Status Checker

10) Screaming Frog

SEO Spider tool of Screaming Frog is quickly crawling and evaluating your website. The SEO tool supports both small and big websites scanning. The tool lets you review, check for error and filter the searched errors.

SEO tool also allows you to export elements like URL’s, titles, explanations, captions, etc. to Excel file so that you can simply use it as a reference for SEO.

Screaming Frog deeply examines the internal and external links of a site to improve the website’s performance. Custom searches can also be done if you are certain that you want to check the particular text.

Website – Screaming Frog

Top Most Popular and Useful WordPress Plugins In 2019

Incorporating the right plugins on your WordPress site is one of the key recipes for creating a functional, efficient and aesthetic space for yourself and the visitors. But with so many plugins in the market right now, it can be quite a daunting task to spot the best options that match your site needs. In fact, it is not uncommon to find and fall for plugins that have bad coding, bugs, and other negative aspects, which end up ruining the user experience.

So to help you make the right decision in 2019, we’ve compiled a list of most lightweight and super functional plugins that you need to check out:

1. Contact Form 7

If you’ve been scouting for a plugin that simplifies the process of creating and managing multiple contact forms, then Contact Form 7 is the right pick. The plugin also uses reCaptcha verification, making filtering of spammy submissions with Askimet both quicker and more seamless.

In addition, Contact Form 7 doesn’t come with extra codings like most plugins in the similar category do. That allows you to create and publish amazing contact forms, through which readers or visitors can effortlessly contact you. Making it your top choice in 2019 can definitely pay off in improving contact for users’ experience.

2. Broken Link Checker

Just as its name suggests, Broken Link Checker is designed to help you scan through your blog or website for any broken links. Upon identifying one, you’ll receive a notification prompting you to fix the dead link. Broken Link Checker typically starts parsing all the posts, bookmarks, and other content, immediately it’s installed.

Getting this plugin should be one of your top priorities as a site owner, because, with broken links, the interface can become complicated. And when the search engine notices that, your SEO rankings might drop while affecting readers’ experience too.

The Broken Link Checker plugin basically performs the functions highlighted below:

Monitoring links in your pages, posts, comments and blogroll
Detecting dead links plus missing images and re-directs
Notifying you about these issues via the Dashboard or through email
Helping you search and filer links by anchor text, URL and more
Allowing you to directly edit broken links from the plugin’s page, without having to update each post

3. Smuch Image Compression & Optimization

What this plugin does is simple. It scans your website for previously uploaded and soon-to-be-added images and optimizes them by decreasing the file size, adjusting the format or resizing the image. With Smush, the optimization process is automated, something that makes work easier for you.

Large image sizes are the number one culprit for a slow website. With slow load times, potential readers are obviously going to be frustrated. And it will affect your search engine rankings too. So if you want clean and lightweight images on your site this year, Smush can do just the trick.

4. Cryptocurrency Price Ticker Widget

This plugin is for websites that deal in or share content about cryptocurrencies and/or trading online. Cryptocurrency Price Ticker widget basically employs the CoinMarketCap API in displaying different cryptocurrency prices either as a widget on the sidebar or in the site’s content, with a shortcode.

The plugin supports up to 50 of the top cryptocurrencies while still offering the option of displaying up to 32 different fiat currencies. The premium version of the plugin offers more functionality in the form of more styles, more currencies, historical prices, and real-time price updates.

5. WordFence Security

With the countless cyber attacks and website hacks witnessed in 2018, it is without question that website security should be a top priority in 2019. And WordFence offers convenient plugin options, both free and paid, which you can work with. The plugin ideally proffers a number of tools that can do the following:

Verify the integrity and repair WordPress core file
Perform backdoor, malware and virus scanning
Form a firewall that can block fake Google Crawlers, whistle list IPs, and block IPs and more
Generate email alerts of warnings as well as critical problems
Protect against brute force hacking
Ensure real-time traffic with Google crawlers, RSS feed readers and more.

6. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a plugin that deserves a place on your website for many reasons. It not only allows you to plan, promote and execute your marketing strategy with ease, but it also makes it easier to organize everything, including scheduled projects, in one place.

With its thoughtful editorial calendar, you can plan and assign an article to writers, all while seamlessly collaborating on blog posts and promoting them after publication. If you are a multi-author blog owner, then this tool might really come in handy for you in 2019.

7. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup

Making a faulty update or a coding fluke as a webmaster of the site may mean losing all the data and content achieve through hard work. Now, that can be downright frustrating. But with UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup plugin, you can enjoy scheduled backup that ensures everything runs smoothly when working on the backend. All backed up data basically goes into the cloud.

8. Revive Old Posts

This plugin allows you to chare older blog posts on all the social networks you’re connected to. For instance, if there’s a quality post you shared a while ago and can no longer be seen by readers, the plugin can revive it from the archives and share it with new people on such social media sites as Facebook, Twitter and more. This is something that can excite new readers and even generate more traffic to your website.

These are by far the best plugins for WordPress sites for 2019 and they are as lightweight and functional as they come. Just give any of them a try and experience the results for yourself.

9. Responsive Menu

Responsive Menu Plugin provides your website with a responsive mobile-friendly version of the main menu. It is a highly customizable plugin allowing you to make the most use of your website’s surface area and make it attractive and easy to navigate to the visitors.

Some of the Responsive Menu Plugin’s feature are :

Desktop and Mega Menu Support
Add custom Header Bar to your website
Seamless control with Touch Gestures and Keyboard Commands for navigation within the Menu
Comes with 20+ Awesome Button Animations to choose from
Supports Multilingual Sites as it comes with WPML and Polylang integration.
600+ Font Icons Supported from FontAwesome and Glyphlcon.

And that’s not it, you can also install pre-made themes from the Responsive Menu to enhance the overall look of your websites. We would highly recommend trying its 7-day free trial and you can get it cancelled anytime within the said period.

8 Best WordPress Plugins for Small Business Success

WordPress comes with the abilities to design and customize a web store by incorporating the use of functional plugins. Use of WordPress plugins owes an extravagant advantage by transforming your simple website into a fully featured one. So, if you are someone who has just started up, you should definitely go for a list of plugins mentioned below for acquiring more leads, traffic, and sales to your online store.

Here the list of 8 best WordPress plugins for small business success, you need on your business website:

Facebook Comments

Facebook Comments is a popular WordPress Plugin which makes easier for website admin to add the Facebook Comment system to your WordPress site without any hassle. Most obviously, by doing so, you will be making it easier for visitors to connect with your site through a platform. When you allow visitors to make comments on your WordPress post, you are increasing engagement, promoting brand awareness, and making commenting easier. Facebook Comments gives you a great and threaded commenting solution integrated with popular social media website.

WP Touch

Depending on your website’s demographic, it might be important for you to have a mobile-friendly website. Google’s latest algorithm update enacted significant penalties for websites failing to meet the standard mobile friendliness guidelines. Not following those guidelines, you could be missing out on highly qualified leads, traffic, and sales. To ensure that your website qualifies Google’s Mobile Test, you need to install WP Touch, which is a powerful plugin designed specifically for the modern mobile web. This plugin automatically adds a simple theme for mobile visitors to your WordPress site. The admin panel of this plugin allows you to customize various aspects of your site including the appearance, user-friendliness, style version to your mobile visitors without modifying even a single bit of code. Responsive WordPress websites enhance the UX on smaller screens and use a combination of fluid layouts and media queries to create a layout which works great on all screen sizes.

Broken Link Checker Module monitors your website for broken links and finds out if any. It also provides a complete report of broken and redirected links. The plugin monitors links in your pages, posts, comments, and even custom fields. Whenever a broken link is found, the plugin will instantly notify you via the WordPress dashboard or by mail. Depending on the size of your site, the overall process might take from a few minutes up to an hour or more. It also all prevents search engines from following broken links.

Wordfence Security

In order to offer the best security features, Wordfence Security comes with a threat defense feed and continuously analyzes the latest threats. Installing this plugin on your website you will be able to offer prevention and protection against ultra advanced cyber attacks. Featured with real-time blocking, monitoring features, multi-site security, it automatically blocks fake Google crawlers. It also monitors the login activity on your site and locks out any attempt to brute force and further enhances login security. Similarly, it checks for passwords to make sure that they are strong enough. It also scans WordPress comments to make sure they don’t contain any malware or phishing URL.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce turns your normal store into a selling machine by incorporating eCommerce functionality. It allows you to design a site which sells almost anything over it by giving both store owners and site managers a complete control over it. WooCommerce plugin is extended with an array of functional features that make a complete shopping solution. Not only you can sell, but also offer product variations, instant download to shoppers and even sell affiliate goods from online marketplaces. Similarly, it also comes bundled with the ability to offer extended payment options.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Yoast SEO comes with a host of features which allows optimizing your WordPress websites for better content and links. All the features and functionalities of this plugin have been designed to guide search engines through every post, page, and category of your site.

WP Live Chat Support

Extremely feature-rich yet cost-effective WordPress Live Chat Support Plugin is specifically designed to engage with your customers in an advanced way. It gives multiple ways to communicate directly with consumers and further increase conversions on your site. This plugin, when installed in your website gives reasons to host live chat either on your own website or on the live chat server. By enabling this plugin in your site, you will be able to build customer’s trust, increase sales and secure the flow of communication.

Google Analytics

Stay updated with the latest features in Google Analytics by using this plugin. This plugin makes it easy to track your site’s usability with loads of data. It enables you to track your site using the latest tracking code and also gives the option to view Google Analytics reports on your WordPress website. The real-time tracking report features details regarding the total number of visitors, acquisition channels, traffic source. Whether it’s about a start-up business or an established one, incorporating the use of above-mentioned WordPress plugins will definitely bring ease, greater search results, increased user engagement and brand awareness. The market of WordPress Plugins is expanding at an alarming rate; hence, when it comes to choosing the best WordPress plugin for your business, most of us might get confused. Therefore, there are various custom WordPress plugin development services available online which provide tailor-made WordPress web development solutions to promote your brand online and offer a great browsing experience to users. Additionally, you can also hire experienced WordPress plugin developers to develop multifarious plugins that upscale your website’s functionality and boost revenue.

Priya is a Technical SEO at Hopinfirst.com : SEO Company. She has 3 years experience in SEO, content marketing, and campaign management. she’s devoured every scrap of knowledge about search marketing and applies it daily as Technical SEO at Hopinfirst.