dead links

How To Check For Dead Links

by Mark E. Mason on January 20, 2009

My blog is literally getting to thousands of pages in size.  Now I know that's not the biggest website in the world, but from my point of view it is getting pretty big. Occasionally, I will get an e-mail from a reader, telling me that I have a broken link in one of my posts.

A dead link, also known as a dangling link and a broken link, is defined as a link which leads to an error page or a web page or server which is unavailable.  While the occasional dead link may not seem like too much of a big deal all it takes is a single dead link to lose a customer.

A website visitor's attention span is typically limited to about twenty seconds.  If you can't capture their attention in those first twenty seconds - click, they're gone.  They're onto the next website or gasp - your competition.

Now imagine you've done your job as a webmaster and captured the attention of a visitor.  They're reading your content and liking what they see.  A link or button captures their attention, they click it and oops, there's an error page.  Some patient folks will go back to the page they were on and continue browsing however the majority will simply click away.  You've lost them and any potential profits which may have been gleaned from their wallets.

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