Fix broken links on your website
Answer Buddy regularly checks the links on your website. A link breaks when the thing it points at moves or is deleted. The page holding the link never changes, so nothing on your side flags it.
Find them
- Go to Overview, then Reports, then Broken links on your website.
- Read the summary. It names the biggest single win first.
- Set Group by:
- Page to edit: one row per page of yours. Best when you are working through pages one at a time.
- What to fix: one row per broken address. Best when the same link is wrong in many places.
- Open a row. It shows the wording a visitor clicks, where it points, and every page it sits on. Each opens in a new tab, so you can go straight to the page and fix it.
Groups you may see
- The same broken link appears on many pages.
- Links still point at a section that was renamed.
- Documents are linked from the page's own folder instead of the site root.
- Images that no longer exist.
- An internal system path is being used as a link.
- Individual broken links: update or remove each one.
Links in page templates
A line under the totals may say some broken links sit in page templates rather than in content. Those are links in the site furniture, repeated on every page, so editing content will not change them. They need a developer rather than an editor, so they are counted but not listed.
After you fix a link
The report updates after the next check. A fixed link can take a day or two to leave the list.