| 🎯 What’s the goal? Detect and fix any broken links on your website. | ⚠️ Why does it matter? Broken links make bad user experience. Audiences could get frustrated and may never return. They devalue your SEO efforts. |
| 🏁 What’s the result? Your website doesn’t contain any broken links. | ⌚ When do you do this? As soon as you put your website online and then on a regular basis. |
| ✅ Any special requirements?N/A. | 🙋♂️Who should do it? Pearson in charge of managing your website. |
👉 Where this is done: Using ScreamingFrog or Sitebulb apps to spot the potential issues. Then fix manually via post/page editors of your CMS.
⏳ How long will this take? about 20 minutes
Let’s hunt for any broken links hiding within your website structure.
Environment setup:
- ScreamingFrog software installed on your computer.
- OR Sitebulb software installed on your computer.
- We recommend that you use Google Chrome browser to navigate the web.
#1 – Checking for Broken Links with ScreamingFrog
Installing ScreamingFrog software
- Go to ScreamingFrog website.
- Click on “Download” under “SEO Spider Tool”.
- The website should automatically detect what operating system you are using. In our case, this is Windows OS. Click on “Download now”. If for some reason you use a different operating system than detected, select it by clicking on “Using a different operating system?” below.
- ScreamingFrog software will start to download.
- After downloading, click on the software you just downloaded.
- Choose “Default” and press on “Install”.
- When you see “Completed”, you can click on “Close”.
Checking Broken Links with ScreamingFrog
- Open “ScreamingFrog SEO Spider” software.
- Wait for it to open.
- “Accept” End User Licence Agreement.
- Check if required settings are enabled by clicking on “Configuration” then on “Spider”.
- Make sure that “Crawl” and “Store” boxes are checked next to the “Canonical” option in the “Crawl” tab. (If you are using the free version it will be automatically checked and any selection will be prohibited like in our case, for paid user all options can be adjusted).
- Exit setting and enter your website URL.
- Click on “Start”.
- Wait for the software to crawl your website.
- After that, you will be presented with a table of your URLs.
- Click on “Response Codes” above the table.
- Choose “Client Error (4xx)” from the filter list.
- Broken links are represented by “404 Status Code”.
- Highlight URL associated with “404 Status Code” by clicking on it.
- After highlighting the URL click on “Inlinks” below.
- Here you will find on which site (“From” column) the broken link is hiding (“To” column). The broken link is one in the “To” column.
#2 – Checking for Broken Links with Sitebulb software
Installing Sitebulb software
- Go to the Sitebulb website.
- Click on the “Try Sitebulb for Free” button.
- Choose “Download for Windows” or “Download for Mac” depending on your OS.
- “Sitebulb.exe” software will start to download.
- Double click on “Sitebulb.exe” after downloading to start software installation.
- Click on “Next”.
- Choose a directory for your software installation and press on “Next”.
- Click on “Install”.
- Wait for the installation to finish.
- And then click on “Finish”.
- Now open installed Sitebulb software.
- Now you must “Create a new free account”. You have to type in your “First Name” (1), “Last Name” (2), “Email” (3) and also check the box next to the EULA agreement (4).
- After you fill in with your data, click on “Register”.
- Now you have to verify your account. As the message below says.
- You should find “Welcome to Sitebulb!” email in your mailbox. Open it.
- Then click on “Confirm Your Account”.
- Now you have to pick a “Password” and set three security questions.
- After that, click on “Confirm & Create Password”.
- You will be granted with “Thanks for signing up” message.
Now you can go back to Sitebulb software.
Checking Broken Links with Sitebulb
- Go back to Sitebulb software, now you can “Sign In” with your newly created credentials.
- Click on “Start Free Trial” (or use an active subscription if you have one).
- After a short introduction click on “New Project” in the upper left corner.
- Start a new project by entering its “Project Name”.
- Then enter your website URL into the “Start URL” box. (Remember to choose Http:// or https:// accordingly).
- Check “Forms authentication required” box if your website requires signing in to access the content.
- Click on “Save and Continue”.
- Wait for Sitebulb to prepare your audit settings.
- After that, you should set “Audit Type” and “Crawler Type” as below. (It should be set that way automatically but check it before proceeding).
- You can add some additional data for your audit but for this SOP and its topic we will stay with “Page Resources” as it is all that you need.
- Check the box next to the “Crawl Website” under “Select URLs sources to Audit” section.
- Click on “Start Now”.
- Then wait for the audit to complete.
- After completion, choose “URL Explorer” on the upper bar.
- There you will find a table with all of the crawled URLs.
- Now click on “All Hints”.
- Now you should find “Broken internal URLs” or “Broken External URLs” on the hint list. There will also be a number of affected URLs.
- Click on “View URLs” next to the hint.
- You will be presented with a list of URLs. Broken links will be represented by “404” code.
- URL in the tab is the one that is broken.
- To find out on what page it exists, click on the “menu” next to the URL.
- Choose “View” under “URL Details”.
- The page that contains the broken link is in the “First Found On” section. You can click on “Export Data” to collect data for your developer.
Repairing Broken Links
Now that you know how to spot broken links on your website, it is time to fix them by editing any broken hyperlink in the Post Editor or by contacting your Webmaster
Keep all your URLs in good shape!
Every link is a part of a motor that runs your website! Make it run smoothly.
