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
-
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
Can you disallow links via Search Console?
Hey guys, Is it possible in anyway to nofollow links via search console (not disavow) but just nofollow external links pointing to your site? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lohardiu90 -
Nofollow Outbound Links on Listings from Travel Sites?
We oversee a variety of regional, county, and town level tourism websites, each with hundreds (or even thousands) of places/businesses represented with individual pages. Each page contains a link back to the place's main web presence if available. My fear is that a large portion of these linked to sites are low quality, and may even be spammy. With our budgets there is no way to sort through them and assign nofollows as needed. There are also a number of broken links that we try to stay on top of but at times some slip through due to the sheer number of pages. I am thinking about adding a nofollow to these outbound links across the board. This would not be all outbound links on the website, just the website links on the listing pages. I would love to know peoples thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Your_Workshop0 -
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 too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/ Does anyone have any experience of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0 -
Link Research Tools - Detox Links
Hi, I was doing a little research on my link profile and came across a tool called "LinkRessearchTools.com". I bought a subscription and tried them out. Doing the report they advised a low risk but identified 78 Very High Risk to Deadly (are they venomous?) links, around 5% of total and advised removing them. They also advised of many suspicious and low risk links but these seem to be because they have no knowledge of them so default to a negative it seems. So before I do anything rash and start removing my Deadly links, I was wondering if anyone had a). used them and recommend them b). recommend detoxing removing the deadly links c). would there be any cases in which so called Deadly links being removed cause more problems than solve. Such as maintaining a normal looking profile as everyone would be likely to have bad links etc... (although my thinking may be out on that one...). What do you think? Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaescentAdam0 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Transfer link juice from old to new site
Hi seomozzers, The design team is building a new website for one of our clients. My role is to make sure all the link juice is kept. My first question is, should I just make 301s or is there another technique to preserve all the link juice from the old to new site that I should be focusing on? Second Question is that ok to transfer link juice using dev urls like www.dev2.example.com (new site) or 182.3456.2333? or should I wait the creation of real urls to do link juice transfer? Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0