How to Avoid Broken Links to Improve User Experience and SEO

Things change in business. The services and products you offer might change. You might switch out your lead magnets as you refine who you want to attract. It’s when these changes are made on a website that there’s a risk of creating broken links.

Best Practice to Maintain a Great User Experience

The best practice when you remove something from your website is either to redirect the url of the old page to a new service, product or lead magnet that has replaced it if it’s very similar or to put a page up in it’s place explaining it’s no longer available and give them some alternative options to check out. This is especially important if you have external sources that you aren’t in control of linking to these pages, otherwise people will end up at a 404 page and this won’t give a great first impression of your business and you will miss out on potential leads or sales.

When you make changes like this you also need to change internal links you have in the website too. Maybe you’ve linked to specific services, products or lead magnets from blog posts or make recommendations from one services page to another. It’s a good idea to check through past blog posts every so often to check for this but you could also use a tool like Ahrefs which will check for broken links, not only within your site but also if any external links you have used are no longer active.

Broken Links can Affect SEO

Having broken links can affect your SEO (search engine optimisation) so it is important to stay on top of it for this reason but I feel it’s most important to show that you pay attention to your business and your website and that you take what you do seriously and provide a fantastic service.

The main purpose of your website is really to be an online sales person. You don’t want your potential clients or customers to have any objections to buying from you and if they click on a link expecting to see a great product or service and what they see is an error page, that’s going to affect their buying mindset.

We are always giving the message that you should be adding new content to your website at least every month, when you do that also take some time to check your links. To make sure this happens block out some time in your calendar every month and write it down as something you’re going to achieve that day then you will be more likely to actually get it done. Surely everyone loves the satisfaction of ticking off something from their to do list!

To get clearer on making sales and money through your website check out our free guide, 5 Ways a Great Business Website can Make and Save You Money.