7 tools to check broken links
A website with broken links does not perform to its potential and often creates bad user experience. Dead links lead to poor usability that heck broken links drives away the visitors and hence, prospective customers are lost. More so, search engines don’t index a website properly that has broken links and thus, search engine visibility of the website slackens drastically. Therefore, it’s important to remove/fix the dead links as soon as possible.
Tracking the broken links is the first step to deal with it, and Google webmaster account must be monitored on a regular basis for the same. Link checking also includes checking of images and external files for proper referencing. A number of web-based and stand-alone tools are also available to help one check broken links.
Here are some popular tools that help check broken links:
W3C Link Checker
W3C Link Checker is a tool that helps in checking of broken links to restore the usability aspect of a website. This tool not only checks problems in links, it also checks anchors and referenced objects in CSS and web pages.
Online Broken Link Checker
This tool checks websites for dead links and also validates both, internal and external URLs. It has in-built features that help it show link’s location in the HTML code. It not only scans many web-pages at once, but also shows compatibility with Mac OS X, iPad, Linux, UNIX, Windows.
Xenu’s Link Sleuth
This tool is used to locate a website’s broken links so that webmasters can fix the issue to enhance the usability aspect. It has a simple user-interface and has the ability to re-check broken links. Besides checking broken links, this tool also checks image paths, external CSS, external JavaScript etc.
Submit Express
Submit Express is another broken link checker tool that helps to locate tricky links for better usability of the website. The outgoing link on your web page can be checked using this tool as well.
Word Press broken link Plugin
WordPress broken link plugin checks various forms of content, like posts, comments etc to find broken links and misplaced images. It will keep track of a specified blog to locate broken links.
Website Goodies
Website Goodies is another popular tool which is extensively used by webmasters to check broken links. This is a simple and easy- to-use tool wherein URLs are inserted to check the broken links.
Dead Links
Dead Links is a fast and simple to use tool to find broken links. This tool provides webmasters with a description of their broken links which in turn, enables them to easily locate the broken links.
Conclusion
Broken links are definitely not a pleasing aspect to have in the website as they severely impact the overall productivity of the site. We must instantly get rid of them to retain the usability and user-friendly nature of the site. From among the mentioned tools, any tool can be used to track down the tricky links to fix them to add value to the site. After all, a website is designed to have enhanced visibility to search engines and get more visitors and business.
