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 all broken links pointing to my site?
-
I help manage a large website with over 20M backlinks and I want to find all of the broken ones. What would be the most efficient way to go about this besides exporting and checking each backlink's reponse code?
Thank you in advance!
-
To find all broken links pointing to your site, you can use various online tools such as Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or SEMrush. These tools allow you to analyze your website's backlink profile and identify any links that lead to pages returning 404 errors or other status codes indicating broken or inaccessible content. Additionally, you can manually check for broken links by reviewing your website's referral traffic, monitoring social media mentions, and conducting periodic audits of your site's content and backlinks.
-
To find all broken links pointing to your site, you can use online tools like Google Search Console's "Links to Your Site" report, which lists external pages linking to your site. Additionally, you can utilize website crawling tools such as Screaming Frog or Ahrefs' Site Explorer to identify broken links from external sources. Regularly monitoring and fixing broken links helps maintain website health, improves user experience, and enhances SEO performance.
-
You can find broken links pointing to your website by using website crawl tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs, checking crawl errors in Google Search Console, and monitoring your backlinks with tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Regularly checking your referral traffic and using online broken link checkers can also help you identify broken links.
-
You can find broken links pointing to your website by using website crawl tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs, checking crawl errors in Google Search Console, and monitoring your backlinks with tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Regularly checking your referral traffic and using online broken link checkers can also help you identify broken links.
-
We often use Moz Pro, its a fantastic SEO tool, we also use Screaming Frog as well, we use this to find any broken internal links.
this has helped improve our on-page seo, for our garden office company.
-
Ha, I feel silly. I do use ahrefs, but somehow the broken backlinks tool escaped me. This is perfect, thank you!
-
Hi Steven,
I assume many of these backlinks will be broken because pages were removed from your site without being properly redirected. If that is the case, Open Site Explorer's Link Opportunities (Link Reclamation) tool should be a big help. This will show all 404 URLs with inbound links that you can recapture be 301 redirecting. Additionally, you can look up the backlinks to each of these 404 pages and reach out to each webmaster requesting they update the URL of their link.
I've also had success exporting Top Pages reports (Moz or Majestic are my preferred tools for this), running any URL with a backlink to it through Screaming Frog and pulling 404 pages/broken links (or even 302 redirects) that way. I usually find additional opportunities that do not show up in the Link Reclamation report.
Hope this helps!
-
Use ahrefs and split the crawls for the main folders of the website. Actually, consider the priorities because then you don't have to do all of the 20m. Start with the main ones and go step by step for being able to crawl the majority.
-
I agree with Kevin. Ahref has that capability assuming you don't run into size constraints. Here's a quick post that explains where to find it. (See https://ahrefs.com/blog/turning-broken-links-site-powerful-links-ahrefs-broken-link-checker/.)
-
Have you looked into ahrefs? I know a ton of horsepower behind it, but don't know if it can handle checking 20m. Good luck!
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
-
Sitewide Footer Links & Sister Sites
Hi We have a number of sister sites across Europe - the sites are under a different domain name, but have a very similar layout & product offering. When looking at duplicate content, they are flagged as being a moderate risk with similar content - we don't duplicate product content, however it's similar. We also link to them in the footer in a drop down - not anchor text links - however this is still seen by Google. I don't think I'll be able to remove links to our sister companies, but should I implement the Href lang if the sites are slightly different? Or find another way to link to them? Here's an example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key & https://www.manutan.fr/fr/maf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
How can I make sure Google is crawling a link from an iframe (video)?
Do they crawl backlinks from an iframe example from a Youtube video embedded in a blog post? TIA!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zpm20140 -
How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?
I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Using both dofollow & nofollow links within the same blog site (but different post).
Hi all, I have been actively pursuing bloggers for my site in order to build page rank. My website sells women undergarments that are more on the exotic end. I noticed a large amount of prospective bloggers demand product samples. As already confirm, bloggers that are given "free" samples should use a rel=no follow attribute in their links. Unfortunately this does not build my page rank or transfer links juice. My question is this: is it advisable for them to also blog additional posts and include dofollow links? The idea is for the blogger to use a nofollow when posting about the sample and a regular link for a secondary post at a later time. What are you thoughts concerning this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?
So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B). We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report. We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A. Has anyone had experience with this method? I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub1 -
Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site?
Hi, Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site? is there any syntax i can use in Google search to list just pages that give 404? Tool/Site that can scan all pages in Google Index and give me this report. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Site wide footer links vs. single link for websites we design
I’ve been running a web design business for the past 5 years, 90% or more of the websites we build have a “web design by” link in the footer which links back to us using just our brand name or the full “web design by brand name” anchor text. I’m fully aware that site-wide footer links arent doing me much good in terms of SEO, but what Im curious to know is could they be hurting me? More specifically I’m wondering if I should do anything about the existing links or change my ways for all new projects, currently we’re still rolling them out with the site-wide footer links. I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)? I’ve got a lot of branded anchor text, which balances out my exact match and partial match keyword anchors from other link building nicely. Another thing to consider is that we host many of our clients which means there are quite a few on the same server with a shared IP. Should I? 1.) Go back into as many of the sites as I can and remove the link from all pages except the home page or a decent PA sub page- keeping a single link from the domain. 2.) Leave all the old stuff alone but start using the single link method on new sites. 3.) Scratch the site credit and just insert an exact-match anchor link in the body of the home page and hide with with CSS like my top competitor seems to be doing quite successfully. (kidding of course.... but my competitor really is doing this.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nbeske0 -
Increasing Internal Links But Avoiding a Link Farm
I'm looking to create a page about Widgets and all of the more specific names for Widgets we sell: ABC Brand Widgets, XYZ Brand Widgets, Big Widgets, Small Widgets, Green Widgets, Blue Widgets, etc. I'd like my Widget page to give a brief explanation about each kind of Widget with a link deeper into my site that gives more detail and allows you to purchase. The problem is I have a lot of Widgets and this could get messy: ABC Green Widgets, Small XYZ Widgets, many combinations. I can see my Widget page teetering on being a link farm if I start throwing in all of these combos. So where should I stop? How much do I do? I've read more than 100 links on a page being considered a link farm, is that a hardline number or a general guideline?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rball10