Does ahrefs provide a tutorial on how to use the broken link feature?
Comprehensive Guide to Fixing Broken Links with Ahrefs
Introduction to Ahrefs and Broken Links
If you are an SEO enthusiast or a website owner who aims to maximize website traffic, you probably heard about Ahrefs, one of the most powerful tools for SEO analysis. One of its remarkable features that we will delve into today is its capability to identify and help rectify broken links that could be damaging your website’s credibility and ranking.
Broken links refer to the links that, upon clicked, lead to a page that doesn’t exist anymore – an error 404. They can harm user experience by leading valuable customers to non-existent web pages and impact your website’s SEO negatively. This is why it’s crucial to utilize Ahrefs or similar SEO tools to find and fix broken links.
Importance of Identifying and Fixing Broken Links
Before we dive into the process of using Ahrefs to identify broken links, let’s shed some light on why it’s crucial to fix these pesky links:
- User experience (UX): Broken links can be a nuisance to users, leading them to frustration and potentially causing them to leave your website.
- SEO ranking: Search engines like Google penalize websites with numerous broken links because they are seen as poorly maintained and unreliable.
- Credibility: Broken links can ruin a company’s online reputation as it seems careless and unprofessional.
How Ahrefs Helps in Fixing Broken Links
Ahrefs is a comprehensive tool that helps in identifying broken backlinks and broken outbound links from your website. Here’s how:
Broken Backlinks
These are the links from other websites that are supposed to lead to any of your web pages but don’t. Ideally, having other websites linked to your site increases your trustworthiness in search engine’s eyes, but dead links can erase these benefits.
With Ahrefs, you can:
Check the ‘Broken’ report under ‘Backlinks Profile’ in the ‘Site Explorer’ section.
You will find a list of your pages that are linked out from other websites but no longer exist.
There you have the opportunity to address these broken backlinks by either restoring the non-existing page or redirecting the link to a relevant, existing page.
Broken Outbound Links
These are the links on your site that are supposed to lead to other peoples’ pages but don’t, which can hurt your rankings.
Using Ahrefs, you can:
Navigate to the ‘Outgoing links’ section in the ‘Site Explorer’ section, then click on ‘Broken links’.
You will see a list of all the outgoing links on your site that are broken.
Depending on the error, there are a couple of ways to fix this issue. You can either correct the URL if it’s mistyped or replace the link with a relevant, working one, or remove the link altogether if it’s no longer relevant.
Conclusion
Maintaining a website’s quality and its search engine rankings involves continuous hard work and staying on top of various SEO best practices. One such necessary practice is dealing with broken links that can inadvertently damage your website’s user experience and search engine credibility. With an extraordinary tool like Ahrefs, not only can you find these elusive broken links; you can also find ways to alter these broken links with minimal web disruptions, making your website a constant favorite among users and search engines alike.