For many people that have a small ecommerce site or a business or personal website that is few pages in length and has three or four links per page, going through the effort to check broken links is really no trouble at all. It is just a matter of opening up the site and clicking on the links to verify they open that new page.
Even in these situations most businesses don’t bother to check broken links on a regular basis and instead assume that everything is find unless a customer brings a link problem to their attention. However, the reality is that most customers aren’t going to bother; instead they are simply going to click off of your site and go on to the next.
The Problem for Larger Websites
Now, consider the issues for large ecommerce sites or business sites that may have hundreds or thousands of links per category on their website, let alone for the entire site. There is simply no way that without an automatic system to check broken links that it could be managed.
Even if the company dedicated some of the IT staff to handling this task it would take days to cycle through the website to check broken links, leaving pages every day that aren’t checked for link functionality.
The Answer
The answer for businesses, both large and small, or for ecommerce site managers is to simply use a program that will automatically check broken links every 24 hours. Since the program can complete the link checks with the speed and accuracy that is simply not possible manually it won’t take long for the software to pay for itself.
There are some very complicated programs out there that check broken links, and then there are some top options that are streamlined, user friendly and easy to view the findings of the website. They will also provide a variety of specific reports that give a complete analysis of the links on any website that you choose to check.
By routinely running the check based on your needs you can choose a pricing system and options for the service that are tailored to your website as well as your budget. This service to check broken links will pay for itself as customers stay on your site and search engines don’t penalize you for links that don’t work.
