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?
-
[Spammy comment removed by forum moderator.]
-
How awesome is that Screaming Frog tool?
-
Hey Kevin,
If you download the CSV report, we should list the referring page in the CSV. I know it'd be better to have it on the on-screen report, and it is on our wish list, but you should be able to see the info in an export.
-
Hi Kevin
Thanks - yes, although I am a Moz Associate, out of full transparency I agree with that you are saying. It is not a tool I specifically use with Moz, and do prefer Screaming Frog for the exact functions you are referring to. Screaming Frog will tell you what pages the bad links are on.
You can definitely pass this on to the product team as a feature request on this page. Personally I love tools like their analytics, keyword difficulty, rank tracker, open site explorer, but I agree from this aspect the crawler is not the strongest, and I would suggest supplementing with Screaming Frog (as I do).
-Dan
-
Dan, although I love me some MOZ the crawl diagnostics kinda suck... all they do is report errors but they don't give any insight on where the bad link is originated... it merely shows the page which is 404ed, which is a BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME.
You guys should know that we need to know WHICH PAGE THE BAD LINK IS ON, and furthermore WHAT LINE OF CODE HAS THE BAD LINK. Who cares about the broken page!?!?!?!?!?
-
Yes when you set up a campaign with Moz Analytics, Moz will crawl your website and return a whole report of suggestions. It will start a sample crawl which gets returned to you pretty quickly, and a full crawl a little bit thereafter. It will report things to you like 400 errors etc.
You can also use the Moz Crawl Test (PRO only as well) which will return to you the HTTP status code of each URL crawled.
Optionally, you can also use Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 pages to crawl, paid for bigger sites).
-Dan
-
Does anyone have any clue on how I can check my internal broken links using MOZ tools?
-
Hello,
If you have a full Sitemap, transform it to a .txt by putting only URL (Excel can do that easily) try Screaming Frog SEO on list mode, which is free regardless of the number of links.
Even if you search a free tool, I strongly recommand to invest 99£/year on this tool, it's worth it.
-
Ok, first, does the url with /errors/error_404 (without the query string) exist?
Also - are you using something to create your 404 pages for tracking purposes?
The query string on the url would appear to be stating the referring url anyway - hence ?q=-i3 basically equates to the page /i3
At a guess - it could be there is a script running to create logs on specific 404's, or create a new log each time one occurs - if this folder is visable to the crawlers, it would get spidered and subsequently the problem would arise.
-
Yeah I tried that but the URL in the URL coloumn shows for example:
/errors/error_404?q=-i3
and the Referrer shows:
/-i3
Neither page exists and so I do not know where the page which contains this broken link is...
-
It does, when you get the report, filter column D marked "4XX (Client Error)" and you will see your 404's there - further along in the report you will also be able to see referring url which will show you which page is linking to it.
-
Checked out the tool I just linked to on here and it doesn't include broken link data
-
Is the the custom crawl tool on here you are referring too? http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test
-
Custom crawl right here on SEOmoz, or you could use Xenu
-
Hi Dan,
Thanks for that tool. It works great and especially like that it works in Chrome.
Do you however know of a tool which would do this site wide rather than per page?
-
This tool is a great extension for Chrome
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
-
How not to lose internal link juice?
Hi, I just added some photography content to my site to showcase my skills, specifically 360 virtual tours. I first tried to have those on regular pages and have the 360s in responsive iframes, but it caused usability problems. So I've chosen instead to have a master page with thumbnails that lead to individuals 360's. https://gregmoinephotography.com/360-virtual-tours-hdr-vr-ready/ Links look like that: http://gregmoinephotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/360/maverick-helicopters/ Each pano takes over the whole page. My concern is losing internal link juice as each pano page doesn't link anywhere. Also, external link juice when people start linking to each 360. What should I do to fix that? Should I just link back to the master page in the body & noscript area, even though content won't be visible? Fine with Google? Lack of content problem? Thank you for reading, and for your help!
Technical SEO | | GregMoine0 -
Disavow links old links
We have built a lot of sites and there a few sites we no longer manage or want any association with. When I have looked at webmasters I can see 20 to 200+ odd links back to our site. The page however at source has no reference to our website. I have searched the code but there isn't anything. Is it safe to disavow these or just leave them?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Will multiple internal links with the same anchor text hurt a site's ranking?
Hello, I just watched this video from the Google Webmasters channel at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ My question: If a site is built up on subdomains, will linking the different subdomains with exact anchor text hurt the site's ranking? Thanks
Technical SEO | | arnoldwender0 -
Site-wide Links
Hey y'all, I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case. The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site. Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google. It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low. If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are? Thanks guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | AAttias0 -
Google Shows 24K Links b/w 2 sites that are not linked
Good Morning, Does anyone have any idea why Google WMT shows me that i have 24,101 backlinks from one of my sites ( http://goo.gl/Jb4ng ) pointing to my other site ( http://goo.gl/JgK1e ) ... These sites have zero links between them, as far as I can see/tell. Can someone please help me figure out why Google is showing 24k backlinks? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Forum Profile Links
Are they really important? Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time. I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat. Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?
Technical SEO | | KS__2 -
No results with Link Analysis
So I have been working with a domain since November last year that still shows no improvement in regards to the link analysis. I am baffled because we have gotten them onto the first page on Google for a few of the keywords we are optimizing. Any help with this is greatly appreciated and I am a noob so definitely open to learning. Thanks in advance to all of you. Domain in question - www.modernportablerefrigeration.com Domain is currently on a shared server if that makes any difference. Cordially, Todd Richard admin@richfinn.org
Technical SEO | | RichFinnSEO0 -
Website Structure - What works best for passing the Link Juice?
As most people know it's usual that the main menu is after the top right small links in html. My questions are: What is more important for google or how does google tell which link is more important than the other to pass juice on? If the top right links are in front of the main menu in html would they get more link juice than the main menu? Should i focus in working on better html structure but still keeping the same look ( reverse the html code but keep the same look through css)? Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0