Managing all the links in a blog is a nightmare for bloggers.
Many external links, internal links, and images are added to the blog over time.
Even for a blog with 50 articles, it will be tedious to keep track of all the links.
Broken links and redirect links impact the search ranking of the website.
It is easy to redirect internal pages to a custom 404 page, but they are not in your control for an external link.
There is a plugin to manage all your links and allow you to edit and monitor them easily.
Broken Link Checker
This plugin is available in WordPress for free. Once installed, it crawls the website, generates the list of links on it, and classifies the links as Warning, Redirects, and Broken.
Disclaimer: This plugin has poor negative reviews due to the complexity of the setup. But if it is appropriately used, it is worth the risk.
We have a website with over 2000 articles; when we installed and checked the links, we resolved the broken link and even removed the obsolete external links on our website.
How to Use Broken Link Checker
It is a very easy-to-use Broken Link Checker plugin.
Install Broken Link Checker from WordPress Repository or Install plugin option.
For Plugin Settings
Dashboard > Setting > Link Checker
The default setting would be more than enough in the beginning. Based on your requirement, you could adjust the plugin’s setting.
The plugin does all the work in the background, so your front end will not be affected. But if your website has thousands of links, change the timing accordingly, so it doesn’t affect your website’s performance.
Depending on the link count, the initial run might complete in hours or days.
Once the report is complete, then you can see all the links & details in
Tools > Broken Links
By default, the page will show all the broken links on the website.
There will be an option to view all links, warning links, and redirect too.
As mentioned, wait for the plugin to scan all the links on the website.
Once done, you can see the status of each URL.
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For Broken Links
- Manually check if the link is broken
- Replace the broken link with an alternative link
- If there is no alternative, then remove the broken link from the blog
There is a quick edit option in the plugin to directly change the link without getting in the post edit.
Another option is ‘unlink,’ and it will remove the link in the blog without opening the blog itself.
For Warning Links
- Manually check the link
- If it is suspicious, then unlink from the blog
- YouTube links will show as warning links, so check manually if the video is still active.
For Redirect Links
- Manually check the link
- Update the link with the final destination link.
- Dismiss it if you want to ignore it.
Apart from this, you could also see the broken link details as a widget on the WordPress dashboard page.
Click here to install this plugin and improve your website ranking and performance.
Apart from broken link management, there are many other factors involved in website ranking. If you are keen to improve your website ranking, then you should try out SEMRush to increase your website traffic.
If you are using any other plugin or tool to manage external links, do share in the comments.
