Something which constantly amazes me is how quickly
the links on a web site go out of date. This is especially
true of external links, but can also occur with internal
links and graphics.
External Links
It's easy enough to understand why external links
can be difficult to maintain. It's very simple - they
are not under your control. Web sites come and go
quickly on the internet. Sometimes sites disappear
because the webmaster moved, lost interest or died.
Occasionally they are removed by their ISP for legal
or ethical reasons. Once in a while a web site is
simply moved to a different host.
In addition, webmasters (at least the good ones)
are always working on their sites, creating new pages,
modifying old ones and moving things around. The best
web sites on the internet are constantly changing
- almost fluid in their design.
So what happens is you link to a large number of
pages all over the web and a few of those each month
are deleted, moved or unavailable for whatever reason.
The result is your visitors click on links and get
the dreaded 404 error. What this does is lowers your
visitors confidence in you and your products - after
all, if you cannot even keep your links you to date
...
Internal Links
More insidious than broken external links are links
within your own website which do not work. These can
be graphics, videos, sound, web pages or just about
anything else.
Several years ago when I was just starting out my
opinion was that all web sites must keep their internal
links up-to-date. Any webmaster who had broken internal
links didn't know his stuff and was an amateur.
Now that I've been webmaster for a large website
(Internet Tips And Secrets has over 1,400 pages and
thousands of images and other files) I've softened
my viewpoint. It's difficult to create a quality web
site, much less maintain it and keep it up-to-date
all of the time.
I guess my point is the ideal is to have no broken
links at all, but reality indicates that occasionally
you will find one or two.
What to do
Internal links are the easiest to handle. I've found
that my links typically get broken not when I initially
upload the pages - it's when I make changes. The following
recommendations will handle just about everything.
Check your links carefully before you upload your
files.
Check each page again after you upload it to your
site.
Sign up for a service such as Atomz, which by it's
very nature must spider your whole site on a regular
basis. This will ensure that any broken page references
are found, although it does not help with other types
of broke links.
If you can run CGI routines and modify your .htaccess
file, go to cgi-resources (or a similar site) and
install a 404 error routine which sends an email to
you on each error. This way you will get immediate
notification of any broken links encountered by your
visitors.
External links are a bit more difficult.
Once you upload your pages, be sure and check every
link on the page - both internal and external.
Use one or all of the services listed below to check
your links. These services all offer free demos for
one page at a time or you can buy the ability to check
your whole site.
1. Net Mechanic - http://www.netmechanic.com/
2. Dr. Watson - http://watson.addy.com/
Another excellent resource is LinkGuard. Use this
to check out all of your links in one fell swoop.
There are several software products available which
will check links from your own computer. These include
the following:
1. Infolink Link Checker - http://www.biggbyte.com/
2. Link Scan - http://www.elsop.com/
Making a Custom 404 Page
This is by far one of the best things that you can
do to help with link rot. Create a custom 404 error
page. This will also catch the problem of people mis-typing
your URLs, as well as a problem with some search engine
spiders that I've encountered lately. It seems that
many spiders have bugs and create invalid URLs. A
custom 404 error page will handily catch these errors.
What happens with a custom 404 error page is simple.
An incorrect URL is typed. Instead of sending the
404 error back to the browser or to your host's default
404 error page, your own page can be displayed. On
this page you can apologize for the error and get
your visitor back to where he belongs by offering
him search capability or a menu or whatever.
What I like to do in addition is to send an email
back to myself with a CGI routine. This way I can
fix those nasty errors quickly without waiting to
check out my server logs.
In Summary
Broken links are an issue on all web sites. In fact,
a large number of dead links is a sign that a site
is not being maintained or is abandoned. In fact,
many search engines will penalize a site in their
rankings if they find too many broken links. If you
want to look professional, then check your links regularly.
