URLs that contain at least one outgoing anchor link which has malformed href data.
Why is this important?
Effectively structuring the internal links of your site directs users and search engine bots to locate and understand the content hierarchy. From an SEO stance, they serve a critical role in guiding search engines to gauge which pages are pivotal on your site.
Malformed links mean that they're broken; this hinders the propagation of link value to the intended target, deeming such links non-functional. Consequently, not only might search engine bots fail to access and process the linked URL, affecting the site's crawling, indexing, and ranking, but it can also worsen the user's navigational experience.
What does the Optimization check?
This Optimization will activate if an internal URL includes an outgoing anchor link sporting distorted href attributes.
Examples that trigger this Optimization:
An example below demonstrates scenarios that would activate the Optimization.
An anchor with only one /
<a href="http:/loudinteractive.com">Home</a>
An anchor with an extra :
<a href="http:://loudinteractive.com">Home</a>
An anchor with a misspelled protocol
<a href="htt://loudinteractive.com">Home</a>
How do you resolve this issue?
Examine and correct the distortions in href values for all such anchors. Depending on what the issue is, you might be able to fix multiple pages in one fell swoop if the link is repeatedly used within a site-wide template.
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