How to Fix Broken Links in WordPress in 6 Easy Ways

If any link available on your website is no longer functioning, then it is known as a Broken or dead link. These links need to be either repaired or removed or redirected to some other website. The restoration process should be done as soon as possible because the longer it takes the badly it affects your site’s SEO. Also, it will reduce the site quality and traffic on various search engines. To maintain and improve site quality, here is our guide on how to fix broken links in WordPress.

Ways to Fix Broken Links in WordPress

Firstly, to fix the broken link we need to find the broken and dead links on your website. Here are some of the ways to find the broken links in WordPress.

• Google Search Console
• SEMRush
• Ahrefs
• MonsterInsights Plugin
• Broken Link Checker Plugin

Find Broken Links Using Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool by Google to manage your website performance and many more. It also helps to notify and find the broken or dead links available on your website.

[1] Set up Google Search Console with your website.

[2] After setting up, go to the Google Search Console of your website.

[3] From the left panel, under the Index section, click on Coverage.

[4] Under Coverage, you can find all the broken or 404 error websites under the Error and Excluded tab.

[5] You can download all the error link files and fix them later.

Related: How to Link within a Page Using “Anchor Link” in WordPress

Find Broken Links Using SEMRush

SEMRush is one of the most popular SEO tools using which you can be able to find the broken links on your website. Also, it has both free (crawl up to 100 pages/domain) and premium service (starting from 100000 pages/month).

[1] Visit the SEMRush website and sign up or create an account on SEMRush.

[2] Click on Left Sidebar, choose Site Audit.

[3] In the new window, click on the New Site Audit button in the top right corner.

[4] Here enter the domain name and set the number of pages to crawl.

[5] Now click on the Start Crawling button to begin crawling.

Note: This may take some time depending upon the number of pages added to the crawl.

[6] Once crawling is done, click on your Domain name under the site Audit list.

[7] You will be taken to the crawl report page.

[8] Here click on Broken under the report overview section.

[9] Finally, click on the Export button on the top right to download the crawl report.

[10] Using the exported report, you can fix all the broken links on your website.

Find Broken Links Using Aherfs

Ahrefs is another popularly used SEO and keyword planning tool which also has the feature to find broken links on your website. It is a subscription-based service that costs about $99/month.

[1] Go to Ahrefs website and log in with your subscribed account.

[2] From the dashboard, click on Site Explorer and enter your domain name.

[3] Click on the Search icon to start crawling on your website.

[4] This may take some time depending upon the number of pages & content available on your website.

[5] Once done, you will be provided with a detailed report of your website.

[6] Under the Overview section, go to Pages > Best by Links.

[7] Now filter the content by selecting 404 not found and you can find all the broken links on your website.

[8] You can export the report overview in a CSV format.

Find Broken Links Using MonsterInsights Plugin

MosnterInsights is a popular WordPress Analytical plugin that allows you to analyze websites on various aspects which includes finding broken links. Also with this plugin, you can set up Google Analytics without editing/adding any code. The plugin is available on both free and premium versions.

[1] From your WordPress plugin store, download and install MonsterInsight Plugin.

[2] Activate the plugin on your WordPress dashboard.

[3] Once the plugin is activated, it may take about 24 hours to analyze your website.

[4] After 24 hours, go to your site’s Google Analytics dashboard.

[5] From the left panel, expand Behaviour and choose Site content.

[6] In the Search bar, type 404.html and click on Search.

[7] This will display all the broken or dead links available on your website.

Find Broken Links Using Broken Link Checker Plugin

Broken Link Checker is one of the most popular broken link finder plugins which is available for free on the WordPress plugin store.

[1] Download and install the Broken Link Checker plugin on your WordPress website.

[2] Activate the plugin and it will start running checks on the backgrounds for all the posts, pages, comments, links, etc. of your website.

[3] View the report on your WordPress dashboard by expanding Tools >> Broken Links.

[4] Here you can find the full report of your website with all the broken links.

Note: If your WordPress site is active for long period then this plugin shows broken links of third-party websites as well on your site.

[5] From here, you can alter or redirect or remove the link from your site.

Tips: This plugin runs in backgrounds which may slow down your server and site speed. In order to avoid that deactivate the plugin once you have found and fixed all the broken on your website.

Fix Broken Link in WordPress

Once you have found the broken links available on your site, you can change them manually. But it is not possible to change manually if you have thousands of broken links on your website. In order to make your job simpler and quicker, use AIOSEO Plugin. This helps fix broken/dead links one by one or bulk directly from a single dashboard.

[1] Install and Activate AIOSEO Plugin on your WordPress website.

Note: Make sure to have the Pro version of the plugin because only the pro version and above offers a redirection feature.

[2] From the WordPress dashboard, go to All in One SEO and choose Redirects.

[3] Click on Activate Redirects from the pop-up.

[4] Now go to the Settings section and turn on the 404 Logs toggle.

[5] Also, select the time period to log the 404 error from the dropdown menu.

Note: Instead of selecting forever, it is best to choose either month/weekly recording to maintain your site performance optimally.

[6] Finally, click on the Save changes button to save all the changes.

[7] Now, move to the 404 Logs section from the top.

[8] Here you can find all the broken links along with the URL hits and last accessed information.

Note: Once activated, the plugin may take some time to gather all the broken information, so if there is no link, then check after some time. If there is nothing even after 24 hours, then you have no error/broken link on your website.

[9] Click on Redirect next to any of the broken links.

[10] Here add the target URL to redirect and choose Redirect type as 301 Moved Permanently.

[11] Then click on Add Redirect to make changes.

[12] Now the broken link will redirect you to the newly added target URL.

Continue the process for all the URLs, if you want each link to redirect to a separate website and go with bulk action to fix all your broken links.

EndNote

Hope this guide helped you fix the broken links on your WordPress website. Also, check out our guide on how to fix permalinks not working on your WordPress website. If you have any queries let us know in the comments section below. For more WordPress-related guides, articles, updates, and more visit our blog.