Link Checker

Check links on your site with the SEO Link Checker feature. The Link Checker will generate a broken link report if there are broken links on your site. This is a great tool to use to optimize your site. Broken links can impact your search engine rankings. Broken links stop search engine crawlers – when they run into a broken link they stop crawling that page and move on to the next one meaning any pages it hasn’t crawled won’t be indexed or receive a ranking.

Note:
  • Some websites will appear in the broken link report even though the links work when a user clicks on them. See Step 3 to learn about false positives in the broken link report.
  • You must enable the Search Engine Optimization bundle to use Link Checker.
1

Analyze Your Content for Links

  1. Go to the Express toolbar and select Dashboard.
  2. Click the SEO tab.
  3. Select Link Checker from the list of options.
  4. In the Link Checker section of the Search Engine Optimization Checklist, select Analyze your content for links.

    SEO Dashboard

  5. On the next page click Analyze your content for links.

    Link Checker - Analyze Content

Note: "Link Checker - Analyze Content" is also found in "Settings" under the "Search Engine Optimization" section.

Link Checker - Analyze Content under Settings

2

Broken Links

The broken links report allows you to quickly edit broken links. In the list of broken links choose a link to correct.

  1. Click Edit node # to go to the page with the broken link that you wish to correct. This will take you to the page with the broken link. You will see a broken link notification on the page.

  2. Correct the broken link/URL.

  3. Click Save.
3

Broken Links Report: False Positives

Some websites will appear in the broken link report even though the links work when a user clicks on them.

  • LinkedIn: 900 or 999 error code. LinkedIn tries to prevent automated copying of information from their website. They return this custom error code as part of this 'feature' on their site. Edit the link settings for linkedin links.
  • YouTube: 404 error code. YouTube wants all links to use HTTPS. If your link begins with HTTP, it will show as an error in the report. Change links to use HTTPS to resolve this error.
  • Microsoft Knowledge Base: 404 error code. Microsoft also tries to prevent automated copying of information from their website. Edit the link settings for Microsoft knowledge base links.
4

Edit Link Settings

You may edit the link settings of the false positives so they do not appear in the broken link report.

  1. Click Edit link settings next to the link you wish to remove from future link reports.

    Edit link settings

  2. Uncheck Check link status. 

    Uncheck check link status

  3. Click Save configuration.

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