Broken links can be simply regarded as links that lead to dead pages. This might be in the form of 404 pages or missing pages on a website or even redirects. It’s a common problem for any website as it’s simply impossible to keep track of changes to each page that your website or blog links to. But broken links can do serious harm to your website and we’re is here to teach you how to fix broken links in WordPress websites.
The process of manually fixing broken links involves checking each and every hyperlink on your website. This can be very tedious and is just too difficult for large websites with tons of links. So we use a dedicated third-party plugin for this purpose.
These WordPress plugins simply scan your entire website for various broken links, link redirects and broken images. It is necessary to monitor for these as they not only create unnecessary, blank content on your website but also negatively affect SEO. It would be terrible for a viewer if they were to read a blog to find a missing link or image in your content. And it would even worse if your SEO score tanked because of the broken links on your website.
So, Beautiful Themes brings you this guide on how to fix broken links in WordPress using plugins. We’ve also provided you with this short list of plugins to use too. So go ahead and check them out before we start!
1) Broken link checker
Broken link checker is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for finding broken links on your website. This excellent user-friendly plugin lets you continually monitor posts, pages, comments and custom fields for broken links. Easily scan your website for missing images and redirects. The plugin even provides you with the option of being notified of broken links directly through emails.
The plugin is also highly configurable which makes it suitable for any website. Each broken link can be easily managed straight through the plugin’s interface. Similarly, the interface itself is very beginner friendly and has a basic and clean structure to boot.
Key features:
- Easily monitors posts, pages and website content for broken links, missing images, and redirects.
- Manageable and clean Plugin interface with direct access to each broken link.
- Highly configurable and beginner friendly.
2) Wp Link status
WP Broken link status checker is a simple WordPress plugin but it certainly gets the job done. The plugin lets you easily enable a crawler on your website to scan for broken links and redirects. The crawler itself is designed to have as small of a load on your servers as possible. It’s lightweight coding and scanning features make it a very easy to enable plugin.
Similarly, its huge option management panel lets you easily specify what kind of content you want to scan. The plugin also lets you directly send you notifications to your email regarding broken links so you can fix them as soon as possible.
Key features:
- Lightweight Plugin designed to have as least load on servers as possible.
- Provides you access to all the broken links and images instantly.
- Easy to enable scan settings and notifications.
3) Link checker
Link checker is the complete broken link fixer package that you’ll ever need. It’s simple setup and low server-side load makes it the perfect plugin to use for beginners. Easily search for all the broken links on your website and change them instantly using Link checker. The plugin is also compatible with all WordPress plugins so nothing breaks while you’re searching for broken links. Moreover, the plugin is also WPML sites too.
Key features:
- Beginner friendly and Simple setup.
- Low server load for scanning for links.
- Compatible with all WordPress plugins and WPML sites ready.
How to fix Broken Links in WordPress using a WordPress plugin
For this demonstration, we’ll be using the Broken link checker plugin because of its simple, beginner-friendly design. So go on right ahead and install this plugin to start with the process. If you are not sure about the process regarding the plugin installation, feel free to check out this article.
Once you’ve finished installing the plugin, we can go ahead and use it to fix broken links in WordPress. But, let’s take a step back and personalize the plugin to fit your website better. To do so, we’ll need to open the Options menu for Broken link checker. To do so, hover over Settings on your WordPress admin dashboard sidebar and click on Link Checker.
Here you’ll be provided with tons of options that show you how to fix broken links in WordPress in a more optimized manner.
Using the General settings page, you can enable Notifications through emails, enable or disable suggestions and more.
You can also disable or enable Link searching on a specific type of webpages on your website using the Look for links in the tab. You can disable link searching on posts with different statuses, comments, pages, forms and more.
Similarly, you can also enable link checking on specific types of links and embeds using Which links to check tab.
Once you’re finished personalizing the plugin, let’s go ahead and start the demo process to show you how to fix broken links in WordPress.
Searching and Fixing Broken links In WordPress
To manage Broken links, all you have to do is open the Broken link checker interface. To do so, hover over Tools on the dashboard sidebar and click on Broken links.
The plugin will automatically search and scan for broken links on your website and list them out on this page. You can use this list of broken links to fix them directly using the same interface as well. Hovering over any of the links gives you the option to unlink them and edit the links. Choose to either unlink the given broken link or changing the link entirely using either of the options.
Clicking on Edit link simply gives you a field to change the URL itself. Simply paste in the new correct URL and click on Update to change the broken link.
Similarly, if you think the link is working fine then you can click on the Dismiss, Not broken or Recheck button too. While clicking on Not broken simply removes the link from this list, Dismissing the link moves the link to the Dismissed filter. You can specifically view filters such as Dismissed or Broken using the filter options given to you on the same page.
Concluding:
And there you have it, that successfully concludes our tutorial on how to fix broken links in WordPress. Remember to check the broken links tool regularly continuing to make sure they’re fixed. It’s important to keep track of how your website is performing and its various elements. Similarly, we have other articles here to monitor the state of your website and its performance. Why don’t you check out some of these articles too?