What is a broken link? What causes broken links?

These dead links give users no value, leave them annoyed and distrustful, and gradually make them turn away from the website.

Why remove broken links from your website?

Broken links may look like a small error, but they seriously affect both user experience and SEO performance.

So removing broken links should be seen as an important part of website optimization, in order to:

• Improves user experience: People visit a website to find information. When they hit a broken link, they are interrupted, cannot find the content they need and easily get frustrated. Over time they will not want to come back.

• Build credibility and professionalism: A website that runs smoothly with few errors makes a better impression and gradually builds trust and credibility with visitors.

• Support more effective website SEO: Google values websites with a clear structure and working links. Broken links, on the other hand, interrupt bot crawling and hurt indexing and search rankings.

• More organic traffic: When the experience on your website is good, users come back or share it with others, which helps grow organic traffic organically and sustainably.

• Lower bounce rate: Broken links are one of the main reasons users leave a page early. Removing them keeps users on your site longer, improves time on site and lowers the bounce rate.

Fixing broken links does not only keep your website running smoothly; it also helps build a credible brand image and supports a structured full-scope effectively. 

With the goal of sustainable growth in software, Woku Shop worked with MONA on a comprehensive SEO strategy. Our team started by optimizing the whole website, from layout structure, URLs, menus, meta tags, load speed and responsiveness to fixing broken links, making the site friendly to both users and Google.

Next, SEO onpage was carried out in detail for each category and article, together with tight internal linking to raise quality scores and improve search rankings. After 4 months we achieved impressive results:

• 91% keywords in the Top 20

• 53% keywords beating the Top 5 KPI

This shows what a well-structured SEO strategy can do: it not only gets a website to the top, it creates real value and lifts the digital brand. Read the full case study of the work between WOKU x MONA .

Common causes of broken links on a website

Broken links are a common problem and have a big effect on both user experience and SEO performance. So what causes broken links?

Here are common reasons your website may have broken links:

• Changes to site structure or URLs: When you edit URLs, rename folders or rebuild the page structure without updating old links, those links no longer lead to the right place.

• Deleted or moved content: If you delete a post or page while links to it still exist elsewhere, they become broken links. Moving content without a redirect causes the same error.

• Mistyped URLs: A small typo, a missing character or an extra space in a link can also stop it from working.

• Destination page no longer available: The page you link to may have been deleted, redirected, hit a technical error, or started requiring a login or payment, so users cannot reach it.

• Expired links: Some links are only valid for a limited time, such as links in email marketing, promotions or temporary document sharing. Once they expire, they break automatically.

• Changed access permissions: Content that is hidden, made private or limited to a certain group of viewers also makes the links pointing to it invalid.

• Firewalls or blocked access: Some links are blocked by a firewall, content filter or security system, so users in certain regions cannot open them.

• Links to temporary content: Links to login sessions, shopping carts or personal data are often unstable and easily become broken links after a short time.

• Errors on third-party websites: You cannot control content on other websites. If they change a URL, delete a post or shut down, the links you point to them break immediately.

Broken links can appear from the smallest changes. So checking and updating your links regularly is something you cannot skip if you want your website to stay stable and friendly to both users and search engines.

That is all the information about the problems you can run into with Broken Link that MONA Media that we wanted to share with you. After reading this article you should have no more questions about links that return no result or redirect to another website. If you would like to learn more about MONA's SEO services, contact us for support and advice, detailed SEO quote with full details.

Slow pages, constant 404 errors and clumsy navigation quietly drag down your SEO rankings without you noticing. Technical optimization such as 301s, 404s, load speed and a clear structure not only improves user experience; it is also the foundation for keywords to reach the top and stay there. Watch the video “4 Core Factors That Get Your Website to the Top of Google” to learn how to optimize keywords naturally, tied to effective technical work, without wasting effort.