Last updated on August 13th, 2024 at 04:55 am
Broken Link checker tools make it easy to detect broken links on your website, so you can fix them quickly. They automatically crawl your web pages and list all the broken links, along with the page where they were discovered and the broken URL they were pointing to. In this article, we will look at the top 10 broken link checker that you can use to find all the broken links on your websites & blogs.
What is Broken Link Checker
When a user requests a URL on your website, if it is not available, or if it does not exist, then server responds with 404: Page not found error message. Such URLs are called broken links. They spoil user experience forcing them to leave your website. They also affect your SEO rankings since search engines don’t like too many broken links on a site. Broken links occur when site administrators and web developers move or remove web pages from their site. In such cases, it is advisable to quickly identify broken links on your website and permanently redirect them to their new location or your website’s home page. This will give a good user experience and avoid SEO penalty in future.
Top 10 Broken Link Checker
Here are the top 10 Broken Link Checker that you can use to completely scan your website or specific pages and find broken links. Some are free while some are paid.
1. Broken Link Checker
Online Broken Link Checker is a free broken link checker tool that can crawl up to 3,000 pages and list all the broken links on your website. For crawling more than 3,000 pages, you need to go for their paid plans.
This broken link checker will automatically crawl all pages on your websites and blogs, validate internal as well as external links, show location of broken links, and report HTTP error codes.
It is a very robust broken link checking tool used by popular companies like Microsoft, Citibank and Citrix.
Also read : Top 5 Server Monitoring Tools
2. Ahrefs Broken Link Checker
Ahrefs broken link checker is one of the most popular broken link checker tools that automatically crawls your website/blog and lists all the broken links on it.
Ahrefs broken link checker is a part of its comprehensive SEO software that allows you to check backlinks, search engine rankings, and more.
It has a very simple interface and also allows you to export crawl result into other formats. However, it is expensive with paid plans starting from $99/month.
Bonus Read : How to Improve Website Speed in Mobile
3. SEMRush
SEMRush is one of the best broken link checker tools that allows you to easily find all broken links on your website & blog.
It allows you to perform in-depth study of links on a website. It finds all the incoming links, along with their anchor texts, type of link (follow/no-follow), host domain, its industry. SEMRush also show geo-distribution of incoming links and IP addresses.
It also helps you to discover all broken links on your website, along with their locations. Its paid plans start from $199/month.
Also Read : Top 5 XML Sitemap Generator Tools
4. Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster tools (now Search Console) provides a free, comprehensive set of tools for webmasters and website administrators to monitor and manage the performance of their websites/blogs.
It also includes a free broken link checker that lists all the broken links on your website/blogs. In fact, it goes beyond link checking. It also shows different errors related to sitemaps, indexing and crawling.
It is an essential tool for every website administrator.
Bonus Read : How to Prevent SEO Bots from your website
5. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop tool that quickly crawls your website and deconstructs its content into URL, title, description, header, and other data points.
It also allows you to easily analyze, transfer, export this crawl data into Excel for further action.
Screaming Frog also examines backlinks, internal links and external links of your website. Its free version supports up to 500 pages. For more pages, you need to opt for their paid plan at £149/year.
6. SiteChecker
SiteChecker is a web-based broken link checker that scans all pages of your website and lists all the broken links along with their URLs, web page with the link and anchor text.
It allows you to scan up to 300 pages for free. After scanning, it provides a comprehensive report of all link-related issues such as broken links, redirect loops, and orphan links.
It also provides a site audit option that allows you to do an SEO audit of a single page or entire website. As a part of this offering, it also tells about thin content, and meta content issues.
It also features website monitoring, that is, you can setup alerts to monitor changes such as errors. Its paid plans start from $39/month.
7. W3C Link Checker
W3C Link checker is free broken link checker that allows you to identify broken links on your site and display different kinds of information such as links, anchor text, summary, heading, etc.
It provides a simple to understand report of all broken links to help you fix your site.
It can be used online as well as downloaded and deployed on-premise. You can also customize the depth of scanning you want.
8. Dead Link Checker
Dead Link Checker is a very useful tool for identifying all kinds of link related problems such as broken links, server timeout, and any other error that stops a web page from being displayed.
It crawls your website and creates an HTML report of all the faulty links on your website that you can use later.
It provides 3 kinds of scans – site check, multi check and auto check. It allows you to scan a large number of links at once, pause scans and resume them later, filter URLs using keywords.
Its paid plans start from $9.95/month.
9. Dr. Link Check
Dr. Link Check scans your site for broken internal links as well as external links pointing to other domains. It also scans links to different files such as CSS, JS, images, not just URLs. It also checks links mentioned in CSS files. In the end, it generates a comprehensive scan report with information about all faulty links.
It allows you to scan up to 1000 links for free. It performs multiple checks per links and also allows you to schedule automated scans at regular intervals.
Its paid plans start from $13/month.
10. WP Broken Link Status Checker
If your site is running on WordPress then there are plenty of plugins to easy check broken links on your site such as WP Broken Link Status Checker.
It crawls your site looking for broken links, redirections, no follow links and other issues. It performs multiple scans and checks per links and provides a detailed report of all link-related problems on your WordPress Site.
It allows you to filter your scan result in numerous ways to easily find the information you are looking for. It runs in the background without disturbing your website performance.
It allows you to alter site content directly from its report. Unfortunately, you need to disable firewall while you use this tool, so it should be used when your website is not busy.
Nevertheless, it is an easy to use broken link checker for WordPress sites. It is free to use with basic features. Advanced features need you to buy a premium plan.
Conclusion
There are many broken link checkers available today. If you are looking for a free broken link checker tool, go for Broken Link Check (tool #1 above). Its free version supports up to 3,000 pages and gives a robust crawl report. If you also want SEO features such as backlink checker, search rank tracker, try Ahrefs or SEMRush, which are slightly expensive. You can also use free web analytics tools such as Google Analytics to identify broken links on your site.
Sreeram Sreenivasan is the Founder of Ubiq. He has helped many Fortune 500 companies in the areas of BI & software development.