Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to find and fix 404 and broken links?
-
Hi, My campaign is showing me many 404 problems and other tools are also showing me broken links, but the links they show me dose work and I cant seem to find the broken links or the cause of the 404.
Can you help?
-
Hi Yoseph,
If you liked the broken link checker Chrome plugin then you could check out another Chrome plugin that the company I work for created. It's called Redirect Path and I use it all the time. It's a handy header and redirect checker that flags up any 301, 302, 404 & 500 errors on any page you visit.
Hope that helps!
-
Only a plus to Adam's response: remember to design custom 404 pages. It's a good idea to include links to pages you want to rank, a search box or a list of featured pages (post, categories, etc.) At least, it may help to keep users staying in your website.
Hope it helps.
Sergio.
-
Adam, any more good links and tools that you can share with me? I see you know "something" about SEO and web-building...
-
No problem. Happy to help.
-
Thanks Adam, Great help!!!!
You made my life much easier!
-
Hi Yoseph,
To find broken links I like to use the Check My Links plugin for Chrome.
As for the 404 errors. I believe there is a way to view which pages are linking to them using the SEOMoz tools but I prefer to just use the Screaming Frog spider. Once you have crawled the site with this tool, all you need to do is select the response codes tab at the top, filter by Client Error (4xx) then click on the links and select the In Links tab at the bottom to see the linking page.
Hope that helps,
Adam.
-
Thanks for your time.
I just cant find any broken links... I don't understand what you answered
-
I think you need to post the URL! Have you tried the links from every page? Although personally I would use an include file to reduce errors and maintenance time, but not sure if you are...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
Can you use Screaming Frog to find all instances of relative or absolute linking?
My client wants to pull every instance of an absolute URL on their site so that they can update them for an upcoming migration to HTTPS (the majority of the site uses relative linking). Is there a way to use the extraction tool in Screaming Frog to crawl one page at a time and extract every occurrence of _href="http://" _? I have gone back and forth between using an x-path extractor as well as a regex and have had no luck with either. Ex. X-path: //*[starts-with(@href, “http://”)][1] Ex. Regex: href=\”//
Technical SEO | | Merkle-Impaqt0 -
How to fix broken links?
Hi, I use WordPress CMS with Yoast SEO plugin. I have just found out that my 403 errors increased dramatically. It seems that all my tags below of each post are being broken for some reason. When i click on the tags i get the following massage: **403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules. ** I assume it has something to do with the configuration within Yoast SEO plugin. Dose anyone know how should i fix that? Thanks, Raviv evsGujA
Technical SEO | | Indiatravelz0 -
How do I fix the h1 tag?
No More Than One H1 Tag Easy fix <dl> <dt>Number of H1s</dt> <dd>2</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Best practices for both SEO and accessibility require only a single H1 tag. The H1 is meant to be the page's headline, and thus, multiple H1s are confusing. Consider employing H2, H3 or CSS styles to achieve the same results with text visualization.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove multiple instances of the H1 tag, so that only one exists on the page.</dd> <dd>I get this error yet it does not tell me how to fix it. I'm not even sure what the H1 tag is?
Technical SEO | | 678648631264
</dd> </dl>0 -
Best free tool to check internal broken links
Question says it all I guess. What would your recommend as the best free tool to check internal broken links?
Technical SEO | | RikkiD225 -
Is link cloaking bad?
I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites. In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links. Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | jwdesign0 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0