This indicates that the URL could not be audited successfully and encountered issues such as Not Found, Error, Forbidden, or Timeout during the crawl process.
Why is this important
Having broken URLs leads to a suboptimal user experience as it prevents users from accessing specific content and could negatively affect your site's SEO, especially if the problem is widespread.
Additionally, broken URLs often lead to internal links pointing to these non-functioning pages, which makes fixing these issues imperative.
What does the Optimization check?
Loud Interactive's Optimization will be activated for any internal URL that fails to return a status in the 2XX or 3XX HTTP response range.
Examples that trigger this Optimization
Imagine a URL like https://example.com/page1
The Optimization would be activated for this URL under any of these circumstances:
HTTP Status code in the 4XX range
HTTP Status code in the 5XX range
Crawl Status 'Timeout'
Crawl Status 'Error'
How do you resolve this issue?
The approach to resolving broken URLs depends on the nature of the issue you're encountering:
Not Found - indicates a 404 status code, meaning that the page no longer exists at this URL. Dealing with 404s usually requires addressing the internal links that point to them.
Error - covers 5XX server errors or other crawl-related issues. This necessitates an investigation into the root cause of the errors.
Forbidden - signifies a 403 status code, which could be due to server configurations. If only certain pages are inaccessible, server blocking might be involved.
Timeout - the server is taking too long to respond, possibly due to server setting issues or complex database queries.
How to handle broken links
Broken links are usually a result of 'Not Found' errors and mean there are internal links leading to these dead ends. They impact SEO and the user journey negatively.
To fix them, identify all linking pages and update those links to direct to active ones or remove them if necessary.
More info from Sitebulb
From the URL List, select the 'URL Details' to view the linking pages.In the 'Incoming Links' section, you'll find all URLs linking to the broken URL along with the anchor text.For a comprehensive view:Select 'Export Optimization Details' from the URL List to do a bulk export.In the export file, you'll find broken URL details. The 'Example Links' column will indicate which pages have links pointing to the broken URL.
Loud Interactive's tools will assist in identifying link issues quickly, especially in navigation areas, by providing data on the number of linking URLs and the context of the links found (navigation or content).
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