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 can I find and fix my broken links
-
There are a number(110) links that SEOmoz has found to have 404 errors. I have been able to find and fix many of them but there are links that are coming from our home page that do not seem to exist. I cannot even find the links in our system in wordpress. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Is there a way to locate where the links are originating from?
-
HI Paul,
I agree 100% with you, in the case you want to check external links. That's why I try to solve my errors on GWT so I can see new external errors showing up.
However in this case I got confused by this sentence:
_ I have been able to find and fix many of them but there are links that are coming from our home page that do not seem to exist._
I thought that he was speaking aboiut links generated inside his homepage. However if the case are external links, I recommend spry advice, but only for few links. If you have many of them you can consider to use GWT API and download all the broken links with their own linking urls. An information which google used to share before but that now is not available in GWT (at least not in mine)
-
Mememax, you're talking about a completely different situation.
Screaming Frog/Xenu are only capable of broken links that your own site links to.
The SEOMoz and WMT crawls are finding missing pages that other sites are linking to on your site. I.e. broken incoming links as opposed to broken internal links.
While both are good to check, if you aren't watching for and fixing your 404s that other sites are linking to, you are potentially throwing away hugely valuable incoming link juice. (Hint: it's even more valuable juice than what is passing from your internal links)
A simple example of this occurs when you just move a page to a new URL, and update your own site's navigation. A Screaming Frog crawl would show no 404 as a result (because you updated your own site's link), but all the incoming links to that moved page could now be 404ing. It's entirely possible that other sites were linking to that page. If you don't watch your broken incoming links reports either in SEOMoz to WMT, you won't know that those other sites are still trying to link. And then you'd be throwing away that incoming link equity.
Makes sense?
Paul
P.S, Of course, you can also monitor your 404s in Google Analytics, but that only shows you broken incoming links that are getting traffic. The other tools mentioned will show you nearly all the broken incoming links even if they're not currently driving traffic. By fixing them, you'll rescue the ranking value and also be ready if they later start to drive actual referral traffic.
-
Sincerely I've never used seomoz tools for crawwling my site to find 404s.
I always used screamingfrog/xenu(last one is free), which gives you not only the url where the error is found but also the type of links and its anchor text. In that way it would be easy to quick find the error, because maybe it's a realtive links which is malformed and pointing to a non existing url.
-
Funny, there was just a question about this a few hours ago (hint, hint SEOmoz team). Here was my advice...
The SEOmoz report will give you one referrer for each 404 error. I've had better success and more complete information using Google Webmaster Tools. You get the information "straight from the horse's mouth" as it were.
- Log in to https://www.google.com/webmasters/
- Go to Health > Crawl Errors
- Click "Not Found"
- For each listed, click the URL
- In the pop up window, the third tab will list the pages that link in.
-
Click on "Export to csv" in the top right hand corner of your crawl report.
When the file downloads, there is a field called "referrer" which will tell you the exact page the broken link was found on.
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
-
Toxic Link Removal-Better to Pay an SEO Firm or Can I Do It Myself?
Hi Jen: Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. They are of the opinion that it is imperative to remove the toxic domains. The fee for toxic link removal is about $3,000.I would prefer to save the $3,000 but would prefer not to take the risk of screwing up my ranking if this is a complex procedure best left to SEO professionals. My assumption is that link removal will involve identifying the toxic domains, requesting removal and eventually submitting a Google disavow request. Can I do this myself or is there a big risk of screwing it up? Assuming it is safe for me to remove toxic links, would anyone suggest software of tools for doing so? Thanks so much.
Link Building | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
How can I find all the outbound links from a website domain?
I want to find all the outbound links (basically whatever comes in <a>tag) from a domain (say www.abc.com) as well as all the subdomains under it (say abc.com/a etc). Open Site Explorer provides the inbound links from a website but does not provide any functionality to get all the outbound links from a website. Is it possible to do?</a> <a>Thanks in advance. Deepak Jain</a>
Link Building | | Deepak_Jain0 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
A link with "return false"- OSE sees as a No Followed Link
Hello, I couldn't find a clear answer to the impact on SEO for a link written in this way: [" class="expert_info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=) [Does the "return false" act as a "no follow"? I came across this in our link data in Open Site Explorer which lists these links all as "no follows." However, an engineer I spoke to said that it shouldn't impact search engine behavior. Any ideas? Thank you in advance! -Sarah K.](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=)
Link Building | | OneMedical0 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Can you require link attribution under the creative commons license?
If we decide to put a variety of our images under a creative commons license, can we require that individuals who choose to utilize these images link back to us?
Link Building | | nicole.healthline1 -
Can link juice be passed in an iframe from domain A to domain B
Need to give our web partners our booking form which must be loaded in an iframe calling back to our domain. Is it possible to pass any link juice from their domain loading our iframe back to us. Was thinking of a "Powered by" text link in the form footer, but I'm guessing the link needs to be outside the iframe. Would love to hear any thoughts or workarounds on this.
Link Building | | apolloseo1