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How to Check for Broken Links on your Website or Blog

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Broken links can harm your search engine rankings. You need to have a solid mechanism that can eliminate thepossibility of broken links.

Linking to other webpages and resources is a great way to keep your readers engaged with your content. Linksprovide access to additional information and when you direct readers to your own posts, it dramatically reducesbounce rate.

it is not only the search engine rankings that get effected with broken links, rather one broken link will be enough toannoy your readers.

There are few online tools like Broken Link Check where you can manually check your site. But there is a problem.You’ll have to run a check every time you publish or update a blog post/page.

It becomes very difficult especially for large sites with more than one author.

If you are using a custom platform then you will have to get something developed to take care of this issue. An evenbigger problem!

However, WordPress users should not worry. There are many plugins which automatically detect broken links.

I tested 5 plugins and found Broken Link Checker the most efficient. It is developed by Janis Elsts andhas more than 400,000 installs.

Read more about Broken Link Checker WordPress Plugin where you would also find complete guide to configure iton your blog.

I am using this plugin since last 3 years and never had any problem. it just works.

If I give you a rough estimate, out of every 200 links I create, around 2-3 are found broken. Without this plugin it wouldhave been impossible to eliminate all broken links as and when they appear.

If you know of some better plugin then please let me know. I will be happy to review it.

Don’t forget to share your experience with other WordPress plugins which you used to detect broken links.