A FREE Online Tool for Finding Broken Links on your Website
Now that is a useful tool.
Its name is AtomSEO and it is found here https://error404.atomseo.com/
AtomSEO is free. There is a paid subscription available but I don´t see a reason to pay for that service. The free version is good for me, and it is probably also good for you.
What AtomSEO Does
It crawls your web site and checks all internal links in real time on whether they are good or broken. This online spider finds all the urls and pages on your web page, even if there is no sitemap, and it gives you a detailed report on dead or broken (404) links.
Not only that, the tool also tests dead backlinks, i.e. links that point to your web site from any other web site. Backlinks are like letters of recommendation for your own web site. Dead backlinks send users to non-existing web pages of your site, and Google Search checks that, and reduces your web site´s search result ranking. Dead backlinks are therefore bad for your site´s usability, reputation and SEO. Take the time to replace or remove each one with the highest priority!
Web site anchors provide shortcuts to specific spots on a web page. AtomSEO validates all anchors on a web page. If any of an anchor link is broken (404 not found), it reports it to you.
AtomSEO also crawls all links to external pages (outside your domain or subdomain). If any of outgoing link is broken (404 not found), it reports it.
You can then easily fix these problem within few minutes, and you should do so immediately.
Free Regular Follow-Up Alert Email
Each new tool will only help you if you regularly make use of it. This is why AtomSEO comes with an automatic alert function.
Once activated, AtomSEO will send you an automatic report email daily, weekly or monthly. You need to sign up as a registered user with AtomSEO in order to use that information.
The free version gives you an automatic report for one (1) domain per user only, but you surely have more than one email address, and you can create one user account per available email address.
What I do is to forward this alert email to our IT staff, and I use it at the same time as a reminder for checking their KPIs for our web site.
That way, AtomSEO saves me time and money.
Call to Action
Here is how to save time when activating the automatic reminder service.
Go to https://error404.atomseo.com/ and then create a log-in identity with your main email address, store the password in your secure password vault.
You need to login before you create the first web site report because you first need to be a registered user and then second need to generate a report before you are offered the “subscribe to alerts now” button. If you do it the other way round, you need to generate two reports which takes quite some time.
Assuming that you are properly logged in, enter your firm´s web page URL into the box and press the “check” button.
Then wait for the report and then subscribe to the monthly automatic alert email service.
Then check whether your web page´s problems are real. They probably are real.
Then get them corrected.
Don´t procrastinate, do it now.
Martin “SEO for free” Schweiger