How to find and fix 404 and broken links?

[Joseph-Green-SEO]

Hi, My campaign is showing me many 404 problems and other tools are also showing me broken links,  but the links they show me dose work and I cant seem to find the broken links or the cause of the 404.

Can you help?

[IPROdigital]

I think you need to post the URL! Have you tried the links from every page? Although personally I would use an include file to reduce errors and maintenance time, but not sure if you are...

[Joseph-Green-SEO]

Thanks for your time.

I just cant find any broken links... I don't understand what you answered

[Adam.Whittles]

Hi Yoseph,

To find broken links I like to use the Check My Links plugin for Chrome.

As for the 404 errors. I believe there is a way to view which pages are linking to them using the SEOMoz tools but I prefer to just use the Screaming Frog spider. Once you have crawled the site with this tool, all you need to do is select the response codes tab at the top, filter by Client Error (4xx) then click on the links and select the In Links tab at the bottom to see the linking page.

Hope that helps,

Adam.

[Joseph-Green-SEO]

Thanks Adam, Great help!!!!

You made my life much easier!

[Adam.Whittles]

No problem. Happy to help.

[Joseph-Green-SEO]

Adam, any more good links and tools that you can share with me? I see you know "something" about SEO and web-building...

[sergio_redondo]

Only a plus to Adam's response: remember to design custom 404 pages. It's a good idea to include links to pages you want to rank, a search box or a list of featured pages (post, categories, etc.) At least, it may help to keep users staying in your website.

Hope it helps.

Sergio.

[Adam.Whittles]

Hi Yoseph,

If you liked the broken link checker Chrome plugin then you could check out another Chrome plugin that the company I work for created. It's called Redirect Path and I use it all the time. It's a handy header and redirect checker that flags up any 301, 302, 404 & 500 errors on any page you visit.

Hope that helps!