1. What is a dead link?
When we browse the website, we must have encountered the experience of "page cannot be found", that is, a seemingly normal web link cannot open the corresponding page after clicking it. We call this link a dead link. To put it simply, a certain page in a normally functioning website cannot be opened.
Dead links are a professional term in website construction. Simply put, dead links refer to invalid links that were originally accessible but later became invalid for some reason. From a user's perspective, dead links and wrong links behave the same, so generally we don't need to distinguish between dead links and wrong links.
Dead links may occur in the following situations:
Dynamic links will become dead links if the database no longer supports them.
A file or web page has moved, causing links to it to become dead links.
The content of the web page is updated and replaced with other links, and the original link becomes a dead link.
Website server settings are incorrect.
2. What impact do dead links have on SEO?
As SEO personnel, we must try our best to avoid dead links on the website! It should be certain that although dead links are not the main reason that affects your website’s ranking, it will also have an impact on website optimization ranking.
First of all, if a website has a large number of dead links and click access is blocked many times, the user experience will be very poor, which will greatly damage the overall image of the website and seriously affect the authority of the website.
Secondly, if search engine spiders encounter too many links when crawling through links and cannot reach them, the number of included pages will be reduced, which will affect the weight of the website in search engines. It can be said that dead links are an important indicator for search engines to evaluate whether your website is qualified. Too many dead links will directly reduce the search engine’s judgment of the authority and friendliness of the website, and at the same time cause damage to the website ranking.
3. How should SEO deal with dead links?
According to my experience the following are the points:
1. Regularly check whether there are dead links on the website. In order to establish a good website image and avoid invalid links, after we complete the design and production of a website, we must carefully check whether there are invalid links so that we can modify them in time. After uploading, we can also use some SEO tools to check dead links for review.
2. When there are dead links on the website, delete the dead links or repair them as soon as possible to make the website structure smoother.
3. Create a 404 page to guide clicks on dead links. When sending a request to a dead link, the server will return a 404 error page. The purpose of the 404 page is to tell the viewer that the requested page does not exist or that the link is incorrect, and to guide the user to use other pages of the website instead of closing the window and leaving.
When creating a 404 page, you must pay attention to comply with SEO requirements. There is a problem in many websites, that is, the 404 page returns a 200 or 302 status code instead of a 404 status code, which is very fatal. Search engines use HTTP status codes to identify the status of web pages. When a search engine obtains a bad link, the website should return a 404 status code to tell the search engine to abandon indexing the link. If a 200 or 302 status code is returned, the search engine will index the link, resulting in a large number of different links pointing to the same web page content. As a result, search engines have significantly less trust in the website. Therefore, after creating the 404 page, be sure to use SEO tools to check whether the returned status code is correct. At the same time, be careful not to redirect 404 errors directly to the homepage of the website, which may result in the homepage not being included.
This article comes from: www.gubaiyou-gubaiyou.cn Will keeping the link not kill you?