Broken Links = Broken Business. Fix ‘em Fast! I’ll Show You How.
UGH! Broken links everywhere. Is there anything more annoying to a site owner?!?!? Not only that, but you can easily lose business; perhaps a LOT of business depending on the circumstances.
If it’s a blog you can very easily lose readers if they find too many broken, non working links. Reader loss could quite possibly mean revenue loss, both in the present AND future…most will never return.
Think especially of new readers full of hope, glee and anticipation in finding a new blog in their niche of choice…what a let down. Not to mention how unprofessional it looks, especially if it’s more then 1 or 2 links.
You also have to be aware of the SEO ramifications that can occur due to too many broken links. Search engines, especially Google will not appreciate it…not one bit. Links, incoming outgoing and internal are the backbone of Google ranking.
If it’s an e-commerce site, oh boy, you could lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars in sales depending on how many links don’t work and how long it takes you to notice.
You hope readers/customers will contact you about it, but the horrifying truth is most will just back away in disgust and go somewhere else.
You may get extra lucky here, if you have a one-of-a-kind site, but how likely is that?
For our purpose now though, we will stick to broken blog links and what you can do about it. The reason for this being, I just fixed 30 broken links on this very blog you’re reading, and I did it in record time 
I did them all with the Broken Link Checker plugin, and I did them all in a very short time. I’m lucky I didn’t have as many live posts yet as I used to, due to my recent restructuring. Of course, this is also the reason why I had most of the broken links.
Irony at it’s finest ain’t it?
Imagine something happening where you had to go through hundreds of pages and thousands of individual links to find the broken ones. Ouch. Well, ya don’t need to with this handy dandy plugin.
This plugin will monitor your blog for broken links and missing images in background and notify you on the dashboard if any are found.
Some options are:
* Checks your posts (and pages) in the background.
* Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
* Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
* Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
* Link checking intervals can be configured.
* New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
Different buttons to choose from for each link and several options you can utilize. I highly recommend grabbing this…it can truly save you in the long run.
Never stop pushing forward!
Dennis
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Tags: Blogging, broken links, e-commerce, link strategy, plugin, seo, wordpress
Michael
Sire
May 8th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Thanks for the reminder Dennis. I knew I had a broken link somewhere, knew the plugin was available and still hadn’t fixed it yet.
Perfect timing on your part. Thanks again.
Rachel Martinezs last blog post..Blogging Income in QuickBooks
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May 8th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Quite welcome Rachel, that’s what I’m here for…glad I could help! I figured this is just the type of post that gives the DOH! effect…I know it does for me lol.
It’s great to see ya here btw, hope ya stick around a bit
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May 9th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
that looks effective way to check on broken stuff in my blog .
but wouldn’t that regualr checking exhaust my resources or bandwidth ? i don’t know .. but is that a possibility !
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May 9th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Good question Ameo. According to the Read Me document with the plugin, it only runs when you have your WP admin open
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September 30th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Found your site in Google, and it has a lot of useful information. Thanks
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September 30th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Well thanks Dan, drop around again!
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October 21st, 2008 at 9:42 pm
never knew this plugin before. glad I use wordpress, so many useful & powerful plugins to help speed up my work.
but honestly, I don’t really like a plugin that “work in the background & monitor things by itself” as it can take more processing power and more memory, especially when you have a pretty busy blog
Acakadut´s last blog post..hugh everett
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October 21st, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I haven’t noticed any extra drainage, and I think it only “works” when you go into your blog.
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November 3rd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I’m going to look into that plugin, sounds like it worked really well for you. I’ve been looking for something like this in the past, but didn’t have time to look for it. Thanks!
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November 4th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Erik - Oh it’s worked very well so far, I highly recommend it.
At first install it may find many broken links depending on how many posts, so that sometimes takes a bit of time….after that, every time you log into your dashboard it’ll just take seconds if you have 1 or 2.
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