"Link rot (or linkrot), also known as link death or link breaking is an informal term for the process by which, either on individual websites or the Internet in general, increasing numbers of links point to web pages, servers or other resources that have become permanently unavailable. The phrase also describes the effects of failing to update out-of-date web pages that clutter search engine results. A link that does not work any more is called a broken link, dead link or dangling link" - Source Wikipedia

Broken links are bad for visitors because they give the impression that your site is not well maintained. and they are also bad for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) because search engine bots will stop from crawling all your pages if they meet a broken link.

A link is considered as a broken link if the web server response gives it a 404 status which is a common error defined by the industry standard. Search engines have changed a lot over the last few years and one of the changes is that they now consider user experience in the evaluation of a website’s ranking in the result pages. Link validity is now one of the important factors in user experience evaluation.

Google specifically advises webmasters to check for broken links in its web design guidelines. In particular, Google has been very vocal about wanting to provide quality pages to those using the search engine and a broken link is comparable to a dead end, therefore long term display of broken links can degrade the overall quality of your website, cause your search engine rankings to drop and of course provide a bad experience for visitors to your website.

Broken links can also affect your listings in the DMOZ and Yahoo Directories which could discourage other webmasters from linking to your website. Even though we tend to concentrate on high rankings in Google, DMOZ and Yahoo are directories as opposed to search endings and provide valuable backlinks to your website which influence your search engine rankings.

Commonly there are two types of broken links - external broken links and internal broken links.

External Broken Links
It is almost impossible not to have external links pointing from your website to other websites. It’s a good practice to refer your visitors to useful resources outside your website and since those resources are out of your control, it is very common for other webmasters to remove webpages that you have linked to.  An external broken link means that the destination page linked from your website no longer exists or the address to the link may have changed. The solution for external broken links is easy - we can either completely remove the link from your website or find a link to replace existing broken link.

Internal Broken Links
Internal broken links refers to those non-working links within your website pointing to other webpages within your website. The bonus with this month’s special offer is that if we find any internal broken links, we will fix them free of charge!

Summary
Not only are broken links a negative experience for your visitors, but they can also stop the search engine bots from crawling your website and will eventually affect your search engine rankings.

             *** OUR OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED FROM 10-13 JANUARY INCLUSIVE ***