Keeping a current customer requires fewer resources than winning a new one. This common business tenet still is true in today’s digital age.
A poll from National Public Radio (NPR) and Marist College found that 76 percent of consumers in the United States do at least some internet shopping, and 16 percent of those shop on the internet at least once every week.
It pays to keep your website current and in good shape to maintain user loyalty.
There are many strategies for encouraging people to visit your web pages, but one of the quickest ways to lose website visitors is through broken internal links.
A broken link is directed at a website that does not exist, or that was moved. These broken URLs take users to a 404-error page.
Broken links create a poor user experience, hurts search engine rankings. and a general unprofessional impression.
Why Fix Broken Links?
If users cannot find what they are looking for on your web pages, there is a good chance they will leave and go elsewhere.
Consumer interviews found that 88 percent of consumers shopping on the internet were less likely to revisit a website that gave them a bad experience.
This includes encountering 404 errors. Therefore, it is in your best interest to find and fix broken links.
In general, web pages have a lifespan of about 100 days, according to the Library of Congress. Keeping your web pages updated and making sure you have working links on your site is essential for creating a favorable long-term impression.
If a potential customer leaves your website, you have lost that conversion, perhaps for good.
Ensuring all your links are working correctly is an essential facet of ongoing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.
You want search engines to be able to visit or crawl every page on your website. Non-working links create crawl errors, which occur when a search engine attempts to reach a web page but is unable to do so.
If searching for broken links on your site and mitigating their damage sounds like a huge task, take heart. You have help in carrying out this vital job.
Efficient Link Repair
Google Search Console, formerly titled Google Webmaster Tools, is a free program that makes it easy for you to maintain and check your website’s ranking on Google Search Results Pages (SERPs) and fix problems.
This tool helps you better comprehend how Google views your site overall, and it can help you check for broken links quickly and easily. Should you find broken links, there are strategies for keeping your visitors on your website.
Create Redirects
Sometimes you need to move or rename web pages. When this happens, you can create a 301 redirect to prevent frustration in users searching for the page that has moved or been renamed.
This solution is highly effective because visitors as well as search engines are automatically and quickly relocated from the old, defunct page location to the new one.
Visitors do not have to do a thing, and they do not generally even know there was a broken link.
Creating a redirect command involves coding changes to a specific location, the .htaccess file. These redirects offer value to your website users, and they make managing broken URLs easy and painless.
Customize Your 404 Error Pages
These pages work to keep visitors involved with and interested in your website by giving them options.
Instead of a blank white page with an error message, a good customized 404 error page offers visitors links to your website’s main pages to help them return as closely as possible to their original target.
To create a custom 404 page, you make coding changes. Check your web pages regularly. Xenu is another program that makes inspections for invalid links easy.
Linking on WordPress
If you create blog posts on a WordPress site that include links, you are in luck. WordPress provides a handy plugin called Broken Link Checker.
You can customize this simple tool. Once you install the plugin, it begins scanning automatically.
Broken links can cost your business revenue. Inspect your website regularly for broken URLs using various programs and take action when you find them.
An updated, well-maintained site not only helps you look professional, but it also can keep you from losing valuable business.
