< Back to Blog

How do broken links affect SEO?
Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:16:48 by Kerry Dye

There is not a lot of information around about how broken links affect your web site's performance in the search engines. Search engine specialists routinely check their customer sites for broken links as part of a comprehensive service, but there isn't any concrete data on it.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence to say that they do have a negative impact, and it's certainly the case that getting listed in reviewed directories such as Open Directory is harder (or impossible) if you have broken links on your site.

PageRank-wise a broken internal link is always going to have a negative impact - you are wasting the "vote" that you have to pass link juice on to another of your pages. After all, a mis-typed link is a connection that you were wanting to make. Additionally it is worse for the user trying to follow it than it is for the search engines.

Personally, I don't think the odd one is going to make any difference to your site rankings, but in the interests of your visitors and the professionalism that you want to promote with your website, then it is something that should be fixed, and it is always something we will highlight in a SEO review.



Kerry Dye
Campaign Delivery Manager


Subscribe

Archives

Related Blogs
Search Engine Optimisation, Wikipedia, and wasted effort
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:40:17 by Joe Bursell
Google Asking for Feedback on Webmaster Tools
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:57:16 by Kerry Dye
Google Respond to Pending sitemap status
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:57:38 by Emily Mace
Google Webmaster Tools and Sitemap.xml files
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:40:59 by Emily Mace
Redesigned Google Webmaster Tools available to more users
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:32:31 by Emily Mace
The future of SEO has BO
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:20:12 by Matt Hopkins
Bing an update on Microsoft's new search engine
Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:23:16 by Emily Mace