Managing Broken Links and 404s in WordPress

Broken links create a horrible user experience. Who wants to click on a link, only to find that it goes nowhere? That the awesome article you were all set to read doesn’t actually exist?

Unfortunately, the natural decay of links (also often referred to as link rot) occurs all too often. Link rot happens for any number of reasons: domains expire, websites are abandoned, incorrect URLs are used, and websites are restructured using new URLs. And, even though best practice dictates the use of 301 redirects in the case of website restructures, not everyone sets them up. Or, if they do - they're often set up incorrectly.

This shouldn’t stop you from linking to other sites. Linking to other websites is an important component of what the web is all about. Some people tend to think that linking out to third party websites will cause visitors to leave their site, reducing their visitor stats, but linking out is exactly what the web was designed for. You shouldn’t be scared of it, rather, you should embrace the value that enriching your content offers. Providing your visitors with related content or a deeper dive on a given topic is a far better user experience than dumping users at a dead end. This is just my opinion, I know there are different schools of thought when it comes to the topic of outbound links.

So, if you can’t control other people’s websites, and you shouldn’t stop linking out to other websites, then what can you do to make sure you're not sending people to non-existent pages? Well, it’s pretty simple really: you can control your own site by performing regular link maintenance and keeping your outbound links in check.

The management of broken links is an integral part of good WordPress maintenance. And, thanks to a number of plugins and tools at our disposal, it's becoming increasingly easy to automate the process of link maintenance these days. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at some of these tools.

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by Chris Burgess via SitePoint