Link Rot Kills
"My site had a severe case of link rot and yours may too!"
Have you ever run a link checking program on your website? No,
not one of those quickie link checks, but a "full site" link
check?
What you learn about your website may disturb you. It happened
to me this week. As owner of a fairly large website that has
been online about four years, I realized I may have had a number
of dead links. I just had no idea how many. Sure, I'd been
averaging a few "dead-link complaints" every month lately, but I
always thought I ran a pretty tight ship.
I thought wrong. I finally ran a full site link check and found
that my site had a severe case of link rot!
While my internal links (links within my own site from one page
to another) were pretty good with just two dead links, get
this... THIRTY external links had rotted away without me knowing
it! Shame on me. Not only does this portray a bad image, it can
cause other problems as well.
For starters, bad links send visitors scurrying away from your
site. Additionally, search engines tend to favor sites WITHOUT
link problems and give higher ranking to sites who keep up on
their link maintenance.
So what about your site? You probably have dead links on your
site right now too, and you are not alone. Studies show that on
average, one out of every 15 links on the Web is not
functioning. If your site is that bad, you're in trouble. Heck,
if one out of every 20 links on your site is dead there's a good
chance that EVERY visitor to your site will find a dead link.
Think about that for a minute. Are you willing to risk losing
every visitor to your website? I thought not.
The solution is to periodically and systematically check for
link rot, especially if your site contains links to other web
sites. Take time and do it today! I researched some programs
this week that you can simply turn loose before you go to bed
and you'll wake up with a fresh list of bum links to fix. Here
they are...
Web-Based Link Checking:
Most of these allow a small sampling of their service on a
limited number of web pages. If you have a very small site,
these are great. Just visit one of these URL's and run a quick
and free check.
Website Garage http://www.websitegarage.com
Net Mechanic http://www.netmechanic.com
Dr. Watson http://watson.addy.com
Link Checking Software:
Software solutions are ideal for larger sites allowing you to
perform the link checks through your own computer. I tried a
number of programs this week and ended up settling on InfoLink
Link Checker by http://www.biggbyte.com/ - it gives you 50 full
uses of the program before you have to pay a dime. If you plan
to use it beyond that you can register it for a small fee.
Some other software programs that will run link checks at your
site are:
LinkScan http://www.elsop.com/
WebAnayzer http://www.incontext.com/
Create a Safety Net for Internal Links:
One more tip I recommend is to add a customized error page to
your site. No matter how well you maintain your internal links,
there will always be surfers who enter a URL incorrectly and get
the dreaded 404 error page. You can keep your visitors from
getting that ugly error message by simply creating a customized
error page.
In a nutshell, it is the same as creating any other web page.
Just create a page that tells your visitors they are a little
lost and invite them to click a link to your home page. For an
example of an effective custom error page, go to this bogus web
page at my website: http://www.bizweb2000.com/asdf
See how it gets folks back on track quickly, rather than losing
them to another website?
Here's another 404 error page that does the trick:
http://www.WebBusinessToday.com/goofsarepeopletoo.html
As far as the technical aspects of making it work, it is simple.
Just create a web page then contact your web host and they'll
tell you exactly how make it work on your server.
If you need some ideas for a 404 error page of your own, check
out: http://www.cool404.com - each time you reload the page a
new customized 404 page will pop up.
Remember, dead links are a bigger deal than you may be making
them out to be. They will compromise your website visitors'
experience severely. Visitors may even click away from your site
never to return. Take your website maintenance seriously if you
want your site to be taken seriously!