Oct 13 2009

Check and Fix Broken Links with This WordPress Plugin

A broken link hurts both your site usability and SEO. Users feel disappointed when clicking a link to land nowhere and search engines certainly don’t want them to: so if they find a lot of broken link on your pages, this may hurt your reputation.

Anyway, it is quite clear that broken links are bad. But there’s hardly any website out there that has no broken links at all – because it is hard to keep up with the ever changing web.

If you are using WordPress, there’s a fairly good solution for you: Broken Link Checker. While it has quite contradictory reviews and did make my site slow for a few minutes after being installed, I found it useful (and usable) enough to share.

Here’s what it can do:

  • Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).
  • Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
  • Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
  • Also detects redirected links.
  • Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
  • Link checking intervals can be configured.
  • New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
  • You view broken links, redirects, and a complete list of links used on your site, in the Tools -> Broken Links tab.
  • Each link can be edited or unlinked directly via the plugin’s page, without manually editing each post.

After you install and activate the plugin, you can go directly to “Broken Links” (which took me a few minutes to access) and then click the link at the top saying how many broken links were found on the site:

Broken link checker WP plugin

Now you should be able to see a table containing the following data:

  • The list of pages where a broken link was detected;
  • The broken link text;
  • The broken link URL.

Broken link checker WP plugin

On hovering over the URL you will be offered to see details, unlink, exclude or edit the URL:

Broken link checker WP plugin

10 Responses to “Check and Fix Broken Links with This WordPress Plugin”

  1. Thomas Scholz says:
    October 13, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    The last time I tried BLC it tripled the size of my database and reported links as ‘broken’ which worked just fine.
    I’m still looking for a good alternative.

  2. Court Reporters says:
    October 14, 2009 at 12:24 pm

    Good plugin for broken links checker. I use deadlink site for broken link checking.

  3. training media review says:
    October 15, 2009 at 5:53 am

    great plugin mate… going to download :) , thanks

  4. Xtend2india says:
    October 15, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Thanks Ann, for sharing this great wordpress plugin. i liked all post by you on tools & reviews.

  5. Proiecte Case Vacanta says:
    October 18, 2009 at 3:01 pm

    if you have so many links that you can’t check them manually, than you have a problem, thus this plugin becomes kinda useless

  6. Dataflurry says:
    November 2, 2009 at 9:34 pm

    I went through one of my websites recently and found several broken links. Once they were repaired, I was able to see an improvement in rankings. I am not sure if it was because of search engine trust or if it was because of improved link flow.

  7. Richard Baldock says:
    November 17, 2009 at 10:04 am

    I installed it but it found none of the 17 broken links on my site… Will look for another…

  8. Importera bil tyskland says:
    March 8, 2011 at 2:24 pm

    This is a powerful plugin that i use on my sites.
    Even though the Webmaster tool tell me if i have a broken link, this tool is quicker.
    And for SEO – broken links arent good!
    So again, Thank you bro.

  9. Bantningsmetoder says:
    October 13, 2011 at 4:35 pm

    Good plugin for broken links checker. I use deadlink site for broken link checking, it didn’t worked so well but this must work better I think! :)

  10. Bantningsmetoder says:
    October 13, 2011 at 4:36 pm

    Good plugin for broken links checker. I use deadlink site for broken link checking, it didn’t worked so well but this must work better I think!