Outbound Links in Your Web Content Can Rot Away
On the web, sites change their structure and naming system, domain names are sold, and websites go dark. We have no control over what another site owner does. One study found that one in every 200 links breaks each week and that each web link has a life expectancy of just over two and a half years. Another study found 38% of the links on the New York Times website were inaccessible or lead to the wrong content.
Why Worry About Dead Links?
Broken links on a web page affect a user’s experience. Sometimes called link rot, it breaks an implied promise to your visitor.
“Since users are irritated by linkrot, it is in your interest to reduce the amount of dead links in your own pages. The overall quality of the user experience strongly influences people’s assessment of the credibility and value of a site: if a site doesn’t work well, users will abandon it. Not only are dead links disappointing to users, they also rob your users of the value they were supposed to gain from going to the destination site.” —Jacob Nielsen on NN Group
Dead Links Affect Your Site’s Search Ranking. Maybe.
I have worked with SEO consultants who insist that Linkrot is a negative ranking factor. John Mueller of Google has said that the Googlebot isn’t concerned with broken links. Yet he says fixing these links is an important part of website management. Because you don’t want visitors to be frustrated with your site and bounce out.
Handling Link Rot on News Round Up Pages
I had been working with a client to periodically produce a page of news links in their niche, cryogenic storage. Like so much other internet content, this is no longer on line. My client would select news items and post them on social media. After a few news items accumulated, I built a blog post. We shared links this way for years.
Finding Dead Links
I use Screaming Frog to crawl the website and find broken links. If you use WordPress for your website, there are plugins to help you find broken links. I’ve used Broken Link Checker from WPMU Dev. When you are logged in as an administrator, and viewing your webpages, broken links have a strikethrough.
Fixing a Dead Link
I will update the link if I can find the content on the original site. But sometimes the content isn’t there anymore. In those cases, I’ll search for that webpage on the Internet Archive. Then I’ll use a link to the Internet Archive, and let a visitor know that they will be clicking through to an archived page.
Not All Broken Links Can Be Fixed
If I cannot find the web page anywhere, I will put a gray box over my description, indicate the complete URL, and note that it is no longer available.
The gray box alerts the visitor that this text is different. I supply the full original URL. A visitor could use that as a starting point if they decide to track it down.
I’d love to test these design choices with actual users, but the time and cost of testing would be inappropriate for content intended to be ephemeral.
What is the Cost vs. Benefit of Fixing this User Experience Issue
How much time and cost should be spent fixing broken links? Ask yourself about the content’s purpose. Is it intended to be referenced for a long time in the future? Is it important for your visitors to trust your content? Then taking care of linkrot would be worthwhile.
If the blog post is meant for entertainment, and it is very timely, maybe not.
Is link rot irritating your visitors? I can help.