How To Check For Broken Links On Your Website
It’s Quite Ease to Check All the Links on Your Website
I ran a broken link check yesterday after receiving an email from a woman who had visited one of my websites and wanted me to know she loved the content I shared so freely, but thought I ought to know I had many broken links and also that my contact form just wasn’t working!
” … but I do want to mention that on your website I was unsure if you got my e-mail. I kept hitting ‘submit’ but it didn’t do anything. Maybe it was my computer. Hopefully you didn’t receive a bunch of those duplicates. Sorry if you did. Plus, on your website, sometimes the links didn’t work. Like I said, maybe it was my computer or the server. Just thought you would like to know.”
This is NOT what any website owner wants to hear, let alone someone like me who promotes high quality SEO and web development services as part of her professional repertoire!
Even though I knew darned well I didn’t have any broken links, and also that my ‘Contact Me’ form was in 100% working order, I did two things to double-check the situation.
How To Check For Broken Links On Your Site – For Free
There is a great free piece of software called “Link Sleuth” - download it here. It’s been around for quite awhile and I can tell you it is great. It’s safe (no spyware or anything like that associated with it), easy to install on your computer and it works.
It checks all the the links on your site: the ones that link all your web pages internally, and any links you have on your site pointing out to other websites. You can set parameters of what it will/won’t check. It’s very efficient.
So, after running Link Sleuth, just like I was sure of … NO broken links on my website. 
Then, I tested out my contact form and again, just as I was sure of … no problems with it submitting my name and email address. It also took me right to the customized ‘Thank You’ page I always put in place for all my contact forms.
And yes, I certainly emailed the individual back, letting her know I appreciated the heads-up, but that unfortunately the problems she encountered were on her end and with her computer (or ISP), and not with my website!
It’s a good practice to periodically run a full site broken link check on all your sites. How often to run the check is up to you, but is also dependent upon how often you make changes to your website, and how many links you have pointing out to other sites. Remember that these other pages you have links pointing to may become non-existent – the website may no longer be available/active, or sometimes the web page you are linking to gets deleted.
Checking for broken links is just one of the many ways to maintain a search engine friendly AND visitor friendly website.
