Likely none of you will need to be made aware of just how important links - both inbound and outbound - are for the functionality of your website and the overall vitality of your online presence. In particular, link building is an integral part of effective SEO and there are a whole host of other reasons why you want to make sure your links continue to serve their internally or externally-oriented purposes. Unfortunately, it’s not a ‘set it-and-forget it’ process, as links that were once active can be made inactive and many times you won’t become aware of that until valuable ‘downtime’ has passed. Here at 4GoodHosting, a part of what makes up a quality Canadian web hosting provider is the fact that we take a genuine interest in your well being out there on the Information Superhighway. We imagine any information that’s especially helpful for optimizing your website is going to be welcome, so here goes. Why Breaks Are Bad Let’s start with a reminder that the web is named as such because of the ability of pages and sites to link to other sources and relevant information. A broken link is defined as ‘a hyperlink which is linked to an empty or non-existent external webpage’, and some people will refer to them as dead links. Most commonly when a link is broken you will receive a 404-page error instead, with the page telling you that the webpage or file you are looking for is not available. Websites that neglect to address broken links for a long time will suffer from 'link rot’ - a term used to describe sites with many broken links. Causes of Broken Links Broken links can be the result of many causes. Sometimes the fault is on the webmaster, and other times they are the fault of the site a link ‘points’ to. A short list of possible and more common causes for broken links: The wrong URL is entered by the website owner for the link. Often from a simple typo or mistake when entering the URL into the <href> tag The destination website has removed the resource you intended to link to...
